Jackie Broon

Arbitration is not only just beginning in July. The hearing, the final stage of the process, is happening in July. The hearing will only take about a week and there should be a decision within about a month of that. If the hearing is in early July we should have a decision before the start of the season.

I agree, but it's very different to what people think, there is very little in the way of bribing decision-making officials. I am one of those, making multimillion pound value decisions, and I have never been offered a bribe in my career. But I think there is loads of doing 'favours' for mates etc. Which is much harder to prove than direct corruption.

I was saying the opposite of that really. I very much doubt there is any bribery within the British judiciary. There may be bias, whether conscious or not, towalds people from the same background, but that wouldn't really come into it in this case.

In my experience corruption is both far more prevalent and far less prevalent than people think. I really don't think there's much of a culture of direct corruption in Britain, brown envelopes etc. but there's a huge culture of nepotism and bias towards people from the same background.

And not forgetting the Chinese owners of Wolves and West Brom where the state has huge influence over supposedly private businesses and individuals. I can see the argument that the definition of 'control' in the PL rules is very wide-ranging, and it does make me a bit nervous about the outcome of the arbitration. But, the PL clearly haven't been consistent in how they've have applied it and I always come back to the question, if they were so confident in their position why not just make a formal decision under rule F.1.1.1 when they were specifically asked to? My guess / hope is that it won't get to an arbitration decision. I think the rejection pf the PL's request to see the evidence relating to calculation of costs is possibly quite significant. It means that the PL can't really challenge the amount, which is probably substantial, at least tens of millions, possibly into the hundreds. Challenging jurisdiction may well be their last throw of the dice. If they lose that challenge then there is a huge amount riding on the arbitration, if they go through that and lose they'll probably be in a very weak position with the CAT case and have absolutely no way out. As it stands, even if they are relatively confident of winning the arbitration, there will still be some degree of doubt and with the potential of £100m+ and their personal ability to serve as directors potentially on the line, there will be huge pressure on them to settle both cases while they are in still in a position to do that. So I think there's a fair chance that they will settle if they lose the CAT jurisdiction challenge.

You haven't read the rules properly, the other proposed directors are liable for disqualification under rule F.1.1.1. if the PL board determines another person who would be a director has not been decaled (which it did in June). And it's not MbS, it's the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that they determined should be disclosed as a director.

The issue is that it's silent on what happens if they don't and there's a catch-all clause in F.4.3. "he shall not become a Director until the Club has received confirmation from the Board pursuant to Rule F.4.2 above that he is not liable to be disqualified as a Director". But it's clearly completely unreasonable behaviour by the PL and is probably not going to look good for them in the CAT case, if it comes to that.

"Upon the Board becoming aware" is the timescale, the PL board made what they referred to as a "clear determination" on the matter in June and so should have disqualified the directors then. Although, in terms of timescales rule F.4.2 states that "within five Working Days of receipt" of the declaration of the club wanting to appoint a director "the Board shall confirm to the Club whether or not he is liable to be disqualified as a Director under the provisions in Rule F.1, and if he is so liable the Board will take the steps set out in Rule F.6".

Because they believe they have a position to defend on the control issue. Their handling of the process is completely indefensible, they should have made a decision, which would have enabled the club to appeal and this would have possibly been all over 10 months ago. That won't come into the arbitration case, because that is purely about control of the club (as confirmed in the High Court judgement), but it will come into the CAT case.

How many times does this point need to be addressed? Rule F.1. A Person shall be disqualified from acting as a Director and no Club shall be permitted to have any Person acting as a Director of that Club if: F.1.1. in relation to the assessment of his compliance with Rule F.1 (and/or any similar or equivalent rules of The Football League or The Football Association) at any time, he has: F.1.1.1. failed to provide all relevant information (including, without limitation, information relating to any other individual who would qualify as a Director but has not been disclosed, including where he or they are acting as a proxy, agent or nominee for another Person); F.6. Upon the Board becoming aware by virtue of the submission of a Declaration or in the circumstances referred to in Rule F.5 or by any other means that a Person is liable to be disqualified as a Director under the provisions of Rule F.1, the Board will: F.6.1. give written notice to the Person that he is disqualified, giving reasons therefore, and (in the case of a Person who is a Director) require him forthwith to resign as a Director; and F.6.2. give written notice to the relevant Club that the Person is disqualified, giving reasons therefore, and (in the case of a Person who is a Director) in default of the Director’s resignation, it shall procure that within 28 days of receipt of such notice the Director is removed from his office as such. The PL Board made "a clear determination as to which entities it believed would have control over the club following the proposed acquisition" in June. Therefore the PL board 'became aware' that the proposed directors had failed to provide all relevant information relating to someone who the PL board determined would qualify as a director. Rule F.6. required the PL board to give written notice to the proposed directors that they were disqualified, which could then have been appealed. The PL did not need that information to make a decision, in fact their rules require that without that information they disqualify the proposed directors immediately.

It isn't clear that the CAT case is going to court yet, they're challenging the jurisdiction of the case. If they lose that challenge they could conceivably throw in the towel at that point.

I don't get why everyone is so negative about this news. We now know that arbitration is well underway and the hearing will be in July. We didn't even know whether it had started before today, or that it was an expedited process (in which a decision is typically made within 6 weeks of the hearing). This means we will likely have a decision either just before or shortly after the start of the season, if the CAT case doesn't force a settlement before then. For the first time we have a pretty definite timescale.

My mistake in wording, by 'tribunal' I meant the arbitration hearing. Edited my original post for clarity.

It's clearly referring to the tribunal hearing. It also says that the PL has applied for an extension of the deadline for disclosure in the arbitration case to the 26th May and that is also the deadline for the submission of their evidence.

The arbitration hearing is in July, but the arbitration process has started. The PL have applied to extend the deadline for disclosure in the arbitration case to the 26th May, which is also the deadline for filing their arbitration evidence. I think this is actually good news, the arbitration is further along than we'd been led to believe and is being expedited.

Well that's bullshit as usual from Jacobs, the papers in fact reveal that the arbitration case is well underway and is currently in the disclosure stage, with a deadline of the 26th of May for filing evidence. It's the tribunal which will be in July and they apparently only last a few days, we could conceivably have a decision within a month of that.

And it will eventually bite them in the arse. For all that the judiciary are meant to be impartial and not let stuff like that influence them, they're only human. Part of our case will be about them deliberately delaying things, if they constantly delay and ask for extensions in this process it will not look good for their defence.

Not necessarily, the arbitration hearing is due in July and is an expedited process, so we could conceivably have a decision on that before the start of the season, or the PL could conceivably settle at any point before then. For example, if the CAT tribunal dismiss their jurisdiction claim or if they're forced to disclose damning evidence.

Confirms that arbitration is being heard in July.

Yeah, there is discretion both ways, they could have just accepted that PIF is legally separate if they had wanted to, like they just accepted that Crystal Palace is owned by a company that doesn't have to disclose it's owners.

Technically a shadow director is something different and not what the PL's position is. A shadow director is defined in UK law and needs to both have the ability to influence the decisions of a company and act on that. The PL's position is that the KSA would have 'control' of the club. The PL's definition of control goes beyond that of a shadow director in UK law: “Control” means the power of a Person to exercise, or to be able to exercise or acquire, direct or indirect control over the policies, affairs and/or management of a Club, whether that power is constituted by rights or contracts (either separately or in combination) and having regard to the considerations of fact or law involved, and, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, Control shall be deemed to include: (a) the power (whether directly or indirectly and whether by the ownership of share capital, by the possession of voting power, by contract or otherwise including without limitation by way of membership of any Concert Party) to appoint and/or remove all or such of the members of the board of directors of the Club as are able to cast a majority of the votes capable of being cast by the members of that board; and/or (b) the holding and/or possession of the beneficial interest in, and/or the ability to exercise the voting rights applicable to, Shares in the Club (whether directly, indirectly (by means of holding such interests in one or more other persons) or by contract including without limitation by way of membership of any Concert Party) which confer in aggregate on the holder(s) thereof 30 per cent or more of the total voting rights exercisable at general meetings of the Club. For the purposes of the above, any rights or powers of a Nominee for any Person or of an Associate of any Person or of a Connected Person to any Person shall be attributed to that Person; The difficulty for the PL is that it has to demonstrate that the Saudi state has control over PIF, if PIF is formed as a legally separate entity and makes decisions independent of the government that might be very difficult for them to do. There is clearly a level of discretion, however, that discretion still has to have a sound basis in law to stand up and the relevant law in determining the control the Saudi state has over PIF would be Saudi law I think.

Thursday is when the PL have to submit their initial response to the CAT case by.

What is surprising though is that the PL haven't come out publicly with a statement disputing that they've breached competition law and/or affirming their commitment to competition law. From what I can tell in other competition law cases the companies involved tend to do that. Also, lack of public statements distancing themselves from potentially anti-competitive behaviour can actually be used as evidence against a company in a competition law case.

But there has to be a legal basis to that judgement. Also, in the case of Crystal Palace they accepted a company based in Delaware taking majority control of the club despite the directors of that company not being known because the law in Delaware doesn't require that. But, like with just about any legal case, it could still go either way. In terms of the competition case I think it is more about how the PL has acted in arriving at it's position. If the PL think there is a significant chance they'll be found to have broken competition law there's a very good chance they'll want to settle and make it go away by reversing their position on the O&D test.

But the issue for the PL is they have to establish that in legal terms. The legal relationship between the Saudi state and a Saudi company can only be a matter of Saudi law and apparently there is no concept of shadow directorship in Saudi law.