The three names at the top of the panel are blacked out. So are the sponsors, and so are most of the witnesses. What is not redacted, in the independent commission’s core decision published on Tuesday, is the finding that Manchester City spent nine years passing off owner money as commercial income.

Here are 10 things the commission actually found.

1. Guilty on 114 of 115 charges. The panel cleared Manchester City only on charge 4(b), one of the non-cooperation counts. Every other charge covering the seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18 was upheld.

2. A £900m distortion of the accounts. The commission concluded that City had “artificially inflate[d] the club’s revenues, and reduce[d] its costs, by more than 900 million pounds” across those nine seasons, using sham commercial contracts to route funding from the club’s Abu Dhabi ownership.

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3. £830m of “sponsorship” that was really owner money. Of the £949.94m City booked as Abu Dhabi sponsorship income over the nine seasons, only £119.25m (12.6%) was actually paid by the sponsors; the remaining £830.69m came from Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), the club’s ownership vehicle. In 2016-17, 92% of the “sponsorship” fees originated from ADUG.

4. A further £70m of hidden costs. Alongside the inflated income, the ruling identified a “disguised funding scheme worth £830.6 million, plus hidden costs of £70 million”.

5. Project Longbow, 2012. The panel found that the scheme was formalised under an internal initiative called Project Longbow, launched in 2012, which coordinated the multiple strands used to boost recorded revenues and mask losses in the post-takeover accounts.

6. A £9.9m shortfall closed in five days. In a striking passage cited by the commission, Manchester City faced a £9.9m shortfall against UEFA’s financial fair play rules on 25 May 2013 and, within five days, produced modified agreements covering retroactive bonuses and US-tour payments that closed the gap.

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7. Witnesses the commission said were dishonest. In one of the most damaging findings, the panel wrote that “evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses called to give evidence on behalf of the club was false in a number of key respects”, and that some had given evidence they knew to be untrue.

8. 42 days of hearing, 7,000 pages of transcript. The commission heard from 27 witnesses over 42 days between September and December 2024 and worked through around 7,000 pages of transcript, apologising in the decision that “it has taken us much longer than we would have wished” after a 1,331-day gap between charges and verdict.

9. Almost everything identifiable is redacted. The three commissioners, the named sponsors, the internal arrangement names and many of the witnesses are blacked out throughout the published document. The panel cited concerns about backlash and rejected the club’s own account of how the sponsorship payments were arranged as “untrue” and constructed “very late in the day”.

10. Appeal by Friday, sanctions still to come. Chief executive Ferran Soriano told staff in a video that the ruling “supports the Premier League’s conspiracy theory” and that the club would appeal by Friday, 2 October. A separate sanctions hearing will then decide the punishment; under Premier League rules that can range from a fine or a points deduction to expulsion from the division, and observers have already raised the possibility of a forced sale of the club.

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