The Premier League has published the Commission’s decision: Manchester City breached its financial rules in every season charged, through sham deals funded from Abu Dhabi. Dubai Watch co-founder David Haigh, former Managing Director of Leeds United, responds.
David Haigh, the former Managing Director of Leeds United and the human rights lawyer who has spent over a decade acting for victims of the United Arab Emirates, including several of the UAE’s own princesses, among them Princess Latifa of Dubai, said:
It is official. An independent Commission has found Manchester City guilty of every charge of serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules across nine seasons, and of most of the charges of failing to co-operate with the League’s investigation. Sham sponsorship contracts, with the shortfall quietly paid by Abu Dhabi United Group, the owner’s own company. A sham image rights deal, also funded from Abu Dhabi. More than £900 million of revenue inflated and costs concealed. Accounts misstated to auditors and to football’s regulators. And when the League came looking, what the Commission called “concerted efforts to stop and frustrate” its investigation.
Let us be clear about what this is. It was never a football club bending the rules. It was the United Arab Emirates, a state run by dictators and despots, cheating at sport and lying about it for a decade, while its Vice President lectures the world on the rule of law.
The sanction will now be decided at a separate hearing, in private. City have until Friday 2 October to appeal, and they will. But the facts have been found, and they will not change.
A fine is nothing to men whose money has no limit. To them it is small change, and they will pay it and smile. So the sanction has to hurt, it has to be severe, and it has to last. Points deductions season after season. Titles struck from the record. Sponsors who colluded in these schemes banned from advertising in the Premier League and across the game. And the directors and owners involved banned from football for life. Anything less tells every owner in world football that the rules are for other people.
Now the harder question, and it is for the Government. This decision puts the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates under strain, because the UAE will want favours. It will lean on trade, on investment, on the friendships it has bought in Westminster, and it will ask for a quiet word, a softer sanction, a slower process. We must show it the red card. The Prime Minister should say, plainly and today, that the Government will not interfere with the Premier League’s process in any way. The UAE cannot buy football and it cannot buy justice, and it is time it learned that the hard way.
When despots act, it is ordinary people who pay. In football it will be City’s own supporters, who did nothing wrong, and the clubs and fans who played by the rules and were beaten by those who did not. In the UAE it is the prisoners, the critics and the women who tried to escape. Mothers like Zeynab Javadli, the former wife of a powerful Dubai sheikh, attacked at gunpoint in her Dubai home, her three young daughters torn from her arms, still not returned to her four months on. Princess Latifa. Princess Haya. Governments looked away. The United Nations looked away.
So perhaps, after all, it will not be the UN that stops the UAE’s dictators and despots, their human rights abuses and their sportswashing. It will not be politicians or governments, or even the likes of Amnesty International. It will be football. The game that the UAE tried to buy will be the thing that finally puts its dictators and despots in their place, and drags its sportswashing through the dirt, where it belongs.
Let the sanction be severe, let it be lasting, and let it be the final whistle on any regime that treats our game as a plaything. The game was never theirs to buy. And if it is football that finally stands up to the dictators and despots, how truly beautiful the beautiful game would be.
Notes to editors
Dubai Watch, founded in 2025, monitors human rights, detention and the rule of law in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the wider United Arab Emirates. David Haigh is its co-founder, a human rights lawyer and the former Managing Director of Leeds United. For over a decade he has acted for people imprisoned and mistreated in the UAE, including Princess Latifa, and he founded the #FreeLatifa campaign.
On 29 September 2026 the Premier League published the independent Commission’s Core Decision finding Manchester City in breach of all charges relating to its financial rules between 2009/10 and 2017/18, and of three of four charges of failing to co-operate. The Commission found the club had inflated revenues and reduced costs by more than £900 million through sham arrangements funded by Abu Dhabi United Group, and had “made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation”. Sanction will be determined at a separate, private hearing. The club may appeal until Friday 2 October 2026. Source: premierleague.com.
Zeynab Javadli is a client of David Haigh and a case documented by Dubai Watch. On 2 June 2026 forces acting for the Dubai authorities raided her home at gunpoint and removed her three young daughters. She was held for eight days, charged with kidnapping her own children, and remains under a travel ban in Dubai. Her daughters have not been returned. Her case is at dubaiwatch.org/zeynab-javadli.
Dubai Watch’s earlier statement on this case, 26 September 2026: Sheikh Mansour: “a hypocrite, and a football cheat”. The same statement on David Haigh’s own site: davidhaigh.co.uk.
David Haigh is available for interview, comment and broadcast on this story, in the United Kingdom and internationally. Media enquiries: contact us.