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November 15, 2018

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PSG facing fresh FFP allegations

UEFA said yesterday that further examination of French giant Paris Saint-Germain’s alleged flaunting of Financial Fair Play rules would have to await a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In the latest revelation from Football Leaks, French sports daily L’Equipe said UEFA was considering ordering PSG to amend its accounts to drastically re-assess the value of its sponsorship contract with the Qatar Tourism Authority.

The Qatari-owned club originally declared the contract to be worth 100 million euros (US$113 million) in the financial years of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015.

L’Equipe said UEFA’s financial oversight body was now insisting that sum be reduced to 58 million euros.

The effect of the change would be to plunge the French champion heavily into deficit, meaning it could fall foul of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules.

That would leave PSG facing UEFA penalties, including a possible ban from the UEFA Champions League and other European competitions.

Under FFP rules, clubs cannot spend more than they earn in any given season and deficits must fall within a 30-million-euro limit over three seasons.

In September, UEFA announced it was re-opening its investigation into accusations that PSG had broken the FFP rules.

PSG, which spent 400 million euros on signing Brazilian star Neymar and French teenager Kylian Mbappe, reacted by lodging an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

A UEFA spokesman said yesterday: “We will have to wait for CAS’s decision on PSG’s appeal before looking at this issue.”

Concerning the allegations in L’Equipe, UEFA said: “We do not comment on specific cases.”

In the wake of the Football Leaks revelations, UEFA warned on Monday it might re-open probes into the finances of other clubs, including Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City.

Meanwhile, according to a Football Leaks investigation published elsewhere yesterday France midfielder N’Golo Kante refused to have part of his Chelsea salary paid under advantageous tax terms in Jersey or to receive offshore payments for his image rights.

The report by French investigative site Mediapart says that six weeks before Kante left Leicester City for Chelsea in 2016, a company called NK Promotions was registered in Jersey, in an apparent attempt to pay 10 percent of the players’ income abroad to avoid tax.

Mediapart was unsure whether the company was set up by Chelsea or Kante’s relatives.

At first, Kante’s lawyer suggested his client would “approve” the set-up, but last year the 27-year-old insisted through his tax adviser that he refused to take any offshore payments.

“N’Golo is inflexible, he simply wants a normal salary,” Kante’s tax adviser said in May 2017 in an email sent to Chelsea.

“After reading numerous press articles on image rights and tax investigations against players and clubs, N’Golo is increasingly concerned that the set-up proposed to him could be questioned by the tax authorities.

“N’Golo decided that he did not want to take any risks.”




 

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