An investigation report published on a football website has claimed senior UEFA officials helped Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) get around its own financial fair play rules over the past few years.
The investigation, published by Football Leaks, was based on nearly 70 million documents analysed by 80 journalists over eight months.
Football Leaks claims the UEFA officials helped the two clubs, which are owned and financed by entities in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, to avoid possible disqualification from the Champions League over violation of its financial fair play rules. The two clubs received nearly 4.5 billion euros from Qatar and Abu Dhabi over the past seven years. The government of Qatar injected nearly 1.8 billion euros into PSG, while Abu Dhabi paid 2.7 billion euros to Manchester City over a seven-year period.
However, investigations by “independent auditors” assigned by UEFA valued the worth of these clubs at far lower amounts. UEFA rules state clubs cannot spend more than what they earn in a season and deficits must fall within a 30 million euros limit over three seasons. The additional money helped the clubs maintain lucrative sponsorship deals.
PSG and Manchester City were fined 60 million euros each in 2014 by UEFA. Then UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino directly negotiated an agreement with Manchester City, proposing it pay a fine of just 20 million euros. By negotiating with Manchester City, Infantino, who is now FIFA president, bypassed UEFA's own financial control panel. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was among the people who were reportedly marked in emails sent by Infantino to the club's owners in Abu Dhabi.
Michel Platini, who was UEFA president from 2007 to 2016, helped PSG escape expulsion and paying a heavy fine by negotiating with Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari president of PSG. UEA also terminated an investigation of PSG in 2017. Platini was banned by FIFA for ethics violations in 2015.
(With agency inputs)
