Kate Feld, Lecturer in Journalism at Salford University, performed Etihad, which presents the current troubling relationship between Manchester and the UAE and contrasts it with the cityвЂ™s radical past. An investigation into the management of MCFC by Spiegel Online, which reports on a period prior to Bernstein joining them, exposed the financial chicanery used to enhance the performance of the club: вЂњManchester City financial reports were a web of lies the team walked all over the Financial Fair Play rules.вЂќ The last dissident Bernstein after resigning his directorship of Manchester Life, was signed up by Man City as their strategic development adviser in November 2017. The site of the Etihad Stadium, built using tax payers money, is leased from the council on very favourable terms to the extremely wealthy owners of the club. The ADUG are also the owners of Manchester City Football Club, which they bought in 2008. The Channel Island is also known as a secrecy jurisdiction due to the extremely limited information on companies incorporated there. Initially, the ADUG was involved with MLDC through a company called Loom Holdings in the tax haven of Jersey. The leader of the council, Sir Richard Leese, is a director of the company, and until April 2017 so was Sir Howard Bernstein, former chief executive of the council. This group entered a ВЈ1 billion property development deal with Manchester City Council (MCC) in 2014, forming the Manchester Life Development Company (MLDC). Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAEвЂ™s deputy prime minister and member of the ruling royal family, owns the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). The deals that the council has with Abu Dhabi are big ones, involving huge amounts of public resources and land, yet many aspects are shrouded in mystery due to refusals by the council to answer questions on them.

Describing the UAE as вЂњthe most brutal police state in the Middle EastвЂќ, one speaker from Amnesty International recounted the appalling record of abuse in the country and the jailing of human rights defenders, such as Ahmed Mansoor, trying to stop those abuses. Manchester City CouncilвЂ™s business partnership with the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, came under heavy criticism from activists and academics at a packed public meeting in the Central Hall on Oldham Street last Saturday.

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