With Chelsea enjoying so much success after signing star players through secret payments, did they get off lightly?
If the club had not been so co-operative they faced a much tougher financial penalty and potentially a points deduction.
The starting point was the aggravating factors – length of time of the wrongdoing, the size of payments, that they were made with the knowledge of senior figures and the seriousness of the breaches.
The Premier League Board concluded Chelsea should be fined of £20m with a transfer ban for two complete and consecutive windows.
But there were mitigating factors to take into account.
BlueCo, which bought Chelsea out of Abramovich’s ownership, self-reported the breaches once it had looked through the club’s books.
Added to that, BlueCo made voluntary disclosures and showed “exceptional co-operation”.
This saw the fine halved to £10m and the two-window transfer ban suspended.
The suspension will be activated if they commit a similar breach in the next two years.
The Board also reserved the right to be able to trigger the suspension at any time in the future if the club makes intentionally untrue declarations.
Chelsea were, however, ordered to pay an unpaid transfer levy of £771,288 in connection to Willian and Eto’o. They were banned from signing academy players for nine months, too.
Importantly, there was no breach of profit and sustainability rules.
When the payments were added to Chelsea‘s accounts they were not in excess of the £105m, three-season spending limit.
If they had been then the prospect of a points deduction would have been real.
The Blues had already been fined 10m euros (£8.6m) by Uefa over the same offences.
And Chelsea still have to face a hearing over 74 Football Association charges, which is likely to be another hefty fine.
So this is not quite over yet.
