Answering the question below 👇 If the money was sourced from ADUG, then it is either equity (so none of it should count towards revenue) or it makes the transactions Related Party ones (RPTs) and then only the “Fair Market Value” (FMV) should be counted as revenue. All of it was though, artificially making it easier to pass PSR. This is what the Commission found as fact. If the money had come from central govt. then nothing breaches the rules unless the sponsors are deemed Related Parties and then again, only the FMV should count towards revenue. If the Commission had found that the money came from central govt. and not ADUG… AND had not found the sponsors and Man City to be Related Parties… then the most serious charges would not have been proven. This is effectively the defence that Man City used at CAS. At CAS, there were only SIX redacted emails in evidence. Those emails were between Man City execs (CFO, COO, etc) over a number of years and they discussed ADUG specifically paying the sponsors. One was from the Board Director, Simon Pearce, but his name was redacted and so the CAS Panel did not know that. As a witness, Simon Pearce explained the emails as the execs being “confused”. That they thought the funds were coming from ADUG but they were “mistaken”. 2/3 CAS arbitrators accepted this explanation because the execs alone could not have enacted the scheme. They would have needed Pearce to do it and he denied it. There was no evidence to contradict Pearce. The issue Man City had at the Independent Commission is that the Premier League had a lot more than 6 redacted emails in evidence. They had hundreds if not thousands of email chains specifically explaining that the money was coming from ADUG, including emails from Simon Pearce. They had emails that showed payments from ADUG, including members of the UAE Govt confirming they controlled the accounts and were making payments on Man City’s behalf. They even had transaction data showing payments from ADUG accounts. Not to sponsors but to staff. But proving fraud on one charge makes it much easier to prove fraud in another charge when it comes to English civil law. The senders of these many emails had no reason to lie in them. And what’s more, there were too many over too many years, involving too many people in the know for there to be any possibility of a mistake. And so there is no reason to doubt them. So for Man City to come along and try the argument that they made “false assumptions” about where the money was coming from… it’s ludicrous. Absurd. And quite frankly, I’m amazed their legal team was prepared to argue it.