The ultra-rich face … accountability? Manchester City and Clippers verdicts show it’s possible | Leander Schaerlaeckens

The sports world has accomplished a rare feat: calling out industrial-scale cheating on both sides of the Atlantic

The first stage of billionaire exposure to accountability is vociferous denial.

The second is bafflement that such an earthly and proletarian problem should even be allowed to happen to you, titan of industry, pillar of society, master of man and beast alike.

The third is a milquetoast non-apology apology “for the distraction and distress this matter has caused”, after issuing a total and belligerent denial through your proxies.

The fourth stage? We’ll know soon enough.

Within the last month, we have traipsed, on tiptoes, into a strange new age where some modicum of repercussion may occasionally threaten the billionaire class – albeit strictly limited to the confines of sports, where nothing actually matters. It’s a new and funny feeling in an age when it seems that the 1% don’t just get a bespoke business climate, where taxation and regulation are administered on an opt-in basis, but their own concierge service from the justice system, too.

Setting aside for the moment the argument of whether billionaires should exist at all, or whether they are a flagrant failure of fiscal policy, this is a remarkable turn of events.

On 2 September, the NBA released the findings of an investigation: The Los Angeles Clippers and their owner Steve Ballmer were officially caught paying star forward Kawhi Leonard $28m off the books for a no-show job with a supposed sponsor, circumventing the league’s salary cap. The Clippers were docked five first-round picks and fined $30m. Ballmer, the ninth richest man in the world, was suspended from involvement with his team for a year. Initially, the Clippers issued a statement, snarling that they “vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence”.