The Manchester City verdict is in, and the 115 claims of sham contracts, false accounting and a total lack of openness (and cooperation) all appear to have be proven, writes Graham Hambly.
An appeal is pending, but where does this put the accountants who worked at the heart of the club during the timeline of the independent investigation (2009 to 2017)?
First up is accountant Graham Wallace, who worked for Manchester City from April 2009 to December 2012. He was hired shortly after the Abu Dhabi United Group takeover and ended up acting as both CFO and COO. Wallace oversaw a massive financial restructuring of the club and is author of several of the leaked emails used against City.
Next up is Jorge Chumillas, who became CFO from January 2013, another prominent figure in the leaked internal comms used by investigators. He left the club in 2016 due to ill health, but appears to have written some of the more damning emails in the bundle of hacked messages. As far as we can see he has no accounting qualifications at all.
Another accountant is Andrew Widdowson, who was head of finance and then FD. He worked at Manchester City between 2005 and 2018, and is now CFO of New York City FC.
Martyn Hawkins, a former Deloitte accountant, spent 12 years with Manchester City in senior roles and at one time was the club FD, before becoming Group Finance Director. He joined Everton FC as its CFO in September 2025.
And there is John MacBeath, who is a chartered accountant and joined the board in 2012. He stepped away from City in the summer of 2024.
When it comes to auditors BDO, the commission says Manchester City concealed the true state of the finances from the firm, so they appear to be in the clear. The worry is the false contracts and false accounting was perpetrated for all those years directly under the same auditor’s noses – and people will ask what an audit is for, and maybe the rotation issue might get another airing!
There could also be implications for unpaid UK tax for City, and an HMRC investigation to see if any tax evasion offences were committed. The Tax Policy Associates’ latest report looks at alleged payment to one manager through a consultancy contract when they were actually employed and should therefore have paid PAYE and NIC in the usual way. TPA’s has estimated that, if this is true, then as much as £12m of tax went unpaid during this time.
And, of course, some people are asking if a new investigation should look at the years after 2017, because so much alleged wronging has been discovered… this one could run and run.
