Lausanne, Monday: Manchester City are free to play Champions League football next season after the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday lifted a two-season ban from European competitions imposed by UEFA.
An initial fine of 30 million euros ($34 million, £27 million) was also reduced to 10 million euros on appeal.
City were accused of deliberately inflating the value of income from sponsors with links to the Abu Dhabi United Group, also owned by City owner Sheikh Mansour, to avoid falling foul of financial fair play (FFP) regulations between 2012 and 2016.
UEFA launched an investigation after German magazine Der Spiegel published a series of leaked emails in 2018. However, CAS found that “most of the alleged breaches reported by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the CFCB (UEFA Club Financial Control Body) were either not established or time-barred”.
UEFA recognised in a statement that many of the allegations fell outside the five-year time limit in its own regulations.
“UEFA notes that the CAS panel found that there was insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold all of the CFCB’s conclusions in this specific case and that many of the alleged breaches were time-barred due to the five-year time period foreseen in the UEFA regulations,” European football’s governing body said in a statement. AFP
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