The chairman of England’s Independent Football Regulator says the organisation has “absolute power” to force Sheikh Mansour to sell Manchester City if the club’s ownership is ultimately judged to have been mismanaged.
David Kogan stressed that no decision had been made and that it was too early to discuss possible action, because Manchester City has appealed the findings of an independent commission.
The commission ruled that the club had bypassed Premier League regulations through “fictitious” commercial agreements over a period of nine seasons. It said the arrangements had inflated revenue or reduced costs by more than £900 million (US$1.2 billion).
It also concluded that Manchester City had “systematically” obstructed and impeded the Premier League’s investigation into those deals.
Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, Kogan said the regulator would wait for the outstanding issues to be resolved before deciding whether to conduct its own investigation.
“If we deem that an owner is not running their club in an appropriate, fair, or proper way, we have the power to tell them to leave the club,” he said.
Asked whether an owner could refuse to sell, Kogan replied: “No, no, no. We have absolute power to do that.”
Kogan said the regulator would not be pressured into reaching a conclusion about Manchester City before the appeal process had been completed.
“I won’t be forced into making any judgments on this until we’ve seen all these issues resolved,” he said. “Then we have to decide whether we want to conduct our own investigation and draw conclusions from that to decide what we want to do. It would be a huge mistake to jump to conclusions.”
The Independent Football Regulator chairman had previously promised to resign if a future investigation into Manchester City by the organisation was subject to political interference.
That warning comes amid concerns that the case could develop into a diplomatic issue between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, where Sheikh Mansour is a member of the ruling family.
