The UAE has threatened to pull billions of pounds of investment out of the UK unless Manchester City are cleared over financial misconduct allegations.
Andy Burnham is under pressure to cool relations with the Middle Eastern country after he said he would be ‘really concerned’ if the club’s Abu Dhabi owners decided to sell up.
But the Prime Minister was forced into an embarrassing U-turn after the remarks as Downing Street later insisted that no football team was ‘above the rules’.
It comes after Premier League team Manchester City were found to have cooked the books to the tune of £900million in a nine-year period.
An investigation found it was peppered with ‘sham’ deals during which the club became the major force in English football winning eight major trophies between 2009 and 2018.
In a damning 40-page verdict City artificially inflated sponsorship agreements and pumped money into the club from its Abu Dhabi owners via disguised payments in a bid to swerve Premier League spending rules.
Man City were found guilty of all but one of the 115 charges relating to financial misconduct brought against the club.
All punishments, including expulsion, transfer bans and points deductions are open to the Premier League and a sanction hearing will take place in due course.
Andy Burnham is seen with City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in 2019 when the PM was then the mayor of Greater Manchester
Mr Al Mubarak is pictured arriving in Downing Street on September 14, 2026
The top-flight team has announced plans to appeal the guilty verdicts.
But the UAE has now threatened to pull billions of pounds of investment in the UK unless Man City are cleared of financial misconduct.
Emirati officials have warned that ‘the Premier League’s actions’ would ‘have an influence on the bilateral state relationship’.
The Telegraph reports that the UAE is threatening to scrap billions of pounds of private investment for a hi-tech Silicon Valley-style hub between Oxford and Cambridge.
It has also been reported that Man City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak met Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in Downing Street two weeks before the Premier League announced its decision.
It is understood that Mr Burnham did not attend the meeting but it comes as the Prime Minister faces scrutiny over his ‘cosy relationship’ with City and its wealthy UAE owners, according to The Times.
The newspaper reports that Mr Al Mubarak attended in his role as chief executive of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund – not as the football team’s chairman.
Downing Street said Mr Burnham had not met the club’s owners since he became PM in July.
City’s head coach Pep Guardiola, right, and Mr Al Mubarak celebrate with the Premier League trophy on May 19, 2024
But the PM described club owners Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development Ltd (ADUG) as ‘a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester’ which the company has invested millions in.
Opposition parties are now calling on Mr Burnham to declare his links to City.
Conservative shadow sport minister Louie French had accused Mr Burnham of ‘publicly backing the owners’ amid a probe into the club’s funding over recent years, describing his comments as ‘frankly extraordinary’.
On Thursday, Downing Street insisted the guilty verdict against City is ‘serious’, after Mr Burnham was accused of making a ‘frankly extraordinary’ intervention in support of the football club’s owners.
A No10 spokesman issued the statement after the Prime Minister said he would be ‘really concerned’ to see the current owners sell up.
Asked by the BBC earlier this week if he was worried about the current owners selling the club, Mr Burnham said: ‘I would be really concerned to lose them.
‘They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester. Obviously, the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is’.
Asked also if his dealings with the club would stand up to scrutiny, he said: ‘I do actually thank the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money that they didn’t just put into the Etihad and the campus around it but also into the city – but yes, of course.’
City were found guilty of charges related to breaches of financial rules between 2009-10 and 2017-18.
The Premier League said an independent commission found City arranged ‘sham’ commercial deals with a number of its sponsors during the period, which were part of a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were required to pay only a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees.
The commission found that the remainder was funded by ADUG, which owned the club.
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