Kelechi Iheanacho’s ex-club, Manchester City will play in the Champions League next season after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) lifted the club’s two-year ban from European football.
The Nigerian star now at Leicester City was on the books of the Manchester Club between 2012-2016 but fell out with manager Pep Guardiola which was the reason behind his move to the foxes.
City were handed the suspension by UEFA’s club financial control body (CFCB) in February for “serious breaches” of club licensing and financial fair play regulations.
The CFCB said City had overstated sponsorship revenue in their accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016, and for failing to co-operate with its investigation.
The Premier League club vehemently denied any wrongdoing and appealed the decision at CAS last month, after previously describing the UEFA disciplinary process as “prejudicial”.
After hearing evidence over the course of three days in June, CAS has now overturned the suspension and reduced City’s initial €30m fine to €10m (£8.96m) after finding “most of the alleged breaches reported were either not established or time-barred”.
A statement from CAS read: “As the charges with respect to any dishonest concealment of equity funding were clearly more significant violations than obstructing the CFCB’s investigations, it was not appropriate to impose a ban on participating in UEFA’s club competitions for MCFC’s failure to co-operate with the CFCB’s investigations alone.
“However, considering i) the financial resources of MCFC; ii) the importance of the cooperation of clubs in investigations conducted by the CFCB, because of its limited investigative means; and iii) MCFC’s disregard of such principle and its obstruction of the investigations, the CAS Panel found that a significant fine should be imposed on MCFC and considered it appropriate to reduce UEFA’s initial fine by 2/3, i.e. to the amount of EUR 10 million.”
