Manchester City raise tensions: UAE warns Britain of the repercussions of the penalty
A crisis looms on the horizon over the historic case
The United Arab Emirates has warned Britain that it could scale back its investments in the country, depending on how harshly Manchester City are punished over the financial breaches an independent Premier League commission found them guilty of this week.
Citing the economic agency "Bloomberg", the newspaper "Marca" reported that Emirati officials had told the British government the expected sanction could affect "the desire to invest and to enter into large-scale commitments in the United Kingdom". That punishment could range from a fine and a points deduction or relegation to a lower division, all the way to exclusion from professional football.
An Abu Dhabi investment fund took over Manchester City in 2008 and has poured money into the club ever since.
The Premier League found that the club committed financial breaches worth more than one billion euros between 2009 and 2018, inflating sponsorship revenues, most of it through Emirati companies.
Bloomberg's figures tell their own story. The UAE has invested more than 30 billion pounds sterling (36 billion euros) in key British sectors over the past five years, including defence, science and technology. A summit between the two countries is planned for this October.
British government officials, by contrast, feel "frustrated" by the UAE's stance, according to the agency. They believe the Emirati side was aware of the breaches Manchester City committed over nearly a decade, even as it insisted it had done nothing wrong.
The Emirati position comes after controversial comments from the British prime minister Andy Burnham, who said the prospect of Manchester City's owners losing out, if they were forced to give up the club because of the scandal, would be "very worrying". He later backtracked.
Downing Street scrambled to clean it up. A spokesperson for the prime minister's office issued a statement hours later, affirming that no one is above the law and that anyone whose responsibility for breaches is proven will have to face the consequences.
Manchester City announced today, Friday, that they have lodged a formal appeal against the decision on the financial breaches, with the final verdict expected by next January.
