City Case Heightens Audit Scrutiny

Manchester City’s Premier League case has intensified scrutiny of Britain’s football and audit oversight, including the role of the club’s accounting firm, BDO.

The Guardian

Why we’re stuck with a Premier League in the clutches of the global mega-rich | Jonathan Wilson

There’s little prospect of the model changing in a country that welcomes wealthy international owners with open arms Football, the world’s most popular sport, played by laws drawn up in London in 1863. The Premier League is the UK’s greatest soft power export. Premier League clubs are owned by a deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia, a billionaire based in Monaco for tax reasons and a disappointing assortment of investors and private equity funds. And what, really, could be more British than that? Football truly is the national game. What the Manchester City case has exposed is just how difficult it is to regulate some of the richest and most powerful bodies in the world. While the wait for the verdict was frustrating, it was perhaps unavoidable given the possibility of legal objection at every turn when a leaked email from City’s in-house lawyer during Uefa’s action against the club had threatened to “ spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next 10 years”. You didn’t get that with Albert Alexander Sr or Peter Swales. Continue reading. . .

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Politiken

Manchester City scandal spreads poison deep into the heart of Downing Street

In Manchester, power, money and football go hand in hand. The verdict against Manchester City threatens not only the club and its billionaire owners. Even Prime Minister Andy Burnham could see his political narrative undermined.