Now the lawyers are under fire! SRA probes misconduct of firms that built City's financial structures

The Manchester City scandal has reached the legal profession itself. The Solicitors Regulation Authority, the body that regulates solicitors in England and Wales, is reviewing whether law firms committed professional misconduct while helping the club set up the financial structures at the heart of the scheme that distorted its finances by more than £900 million.

Details: According to reports, the SRA is examining the damning Premier League commission ruling and will assess whether solicitors involved in designing the disguised-funding arrangements breached their professional duties. Attention has centred on figures such as Simon Cliff, a qualified solicitor who served as the club's general counsel between 2009 and 2013 and is now general counsel of City Football Group: Companies House records show he was a director of Fordham Sports Image Rights Ltd, the company the commission described as effectively acting as a front for owner Abu Dhabi United Group, between June 2012 and July 2013. Importantly, the published ruling does not name Cliff among the redacted individuals, nor does it suggest he was aware of any rule breaches. The SRA is understood to be waiting for the full unredacted ruling, whose appendix is expected to identify those who knew of and approved the arrangements, before deciding whether to open a formal investigation. Sanctions for proven professional misconduct range from fines and rebukes to prosecution before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and even being struck off the roll of solicitors.

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The review adds yet another front to a war City are fighting on multiple fronts. The club has already lodged a comprehensive appeal against the guilty verdict, insists it is innocent and claims the commission's opinion contains material errors of law, fact and principle. Beyond the Premier League, the new Independent Football Regulator is weighing action that could ultimately target the Abu Dhabi ownership, UEFA confirmed it is monitoring the file and could bring its own charges once the English process ends, and even Etihad Airways has hired the feared litigation firm Quinn Emanuel as it studies a lawsuit against the Premier League over the verdict. The Fordham arrangement sat inside Project Longbow, a 2012 initiative the commission found disguised money associated with the club's owner as ordinary operating income.

It's worth noting that an SRA review establishes nothing by itself: the regulator has merely stated that it will assess whether the published material raises questions that require further enquiry, and any formal action would depend on evidence, including the still-unpublished names in the redacted appendix. Still, the very fact that England's legal watchdog is reading the verdict line by line deepens the pressure on everyone who designed the structures now labelled a concealed-financing scheme, while City continue to deny everything and prepare for a legal battle that could run for years.

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