Footballer Benjamin Mendy says he is “delighted” after a judge ordered Manchester City to pay him around £8.5m – as he called on the club to “do the honourable thing”.
Mendy took the Premier League champions to an employment tribunal, claiming they had wrongly stopped his £500,000-a-month salary after he was charged with sex offences and remanded into custody in August 2021.
The 30-year-old was subsequently cleared of all charges.
Tribunal Judge Joanne Dunlop ruled on Wednesday that Mendy should be entitled to the majority of his £11m claim for unauthorised deductions from his wages by the club.
His claim covered a 22-month period, five of which were when he was in custody for breaching bail conditions and therefore not entitled to pay, the judge ruled.
This leaves him with around £8.5m owed, though the exact amount is yet to be agreed by his lawyers and Man City.
In a statement, Mendy thanked his lawyers and said: “Having had to wait for three years for my wages, I am delighted with the decision and sincerely hope that the club will now do the honourable thing and pay the outstanding amounts, as well as the other amounts promised to me under the contract, without further delay, so I can finally put this difficult part of my life behind me.”
The FA suspended Mendy in August 2021 after he was arrested and charged with sex offences. City then stopped paying him from the following month until the end of his contract in June 2023.
He was later found not guilty of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault in January 2023, but the same jury could not reach a verdict on another count of rape and one count of attempted rape.
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The following July, Mendy was found not guilty of one count of rape and one count of attempted rape by a jury in a retrial at Chester Crown Court.
Tribunal documents showed the footballer – who now plays for French Ligue 2 team Lorient – had to sell his £4.8m Cheshire mansion to cover legal fees, bills and child support payments while the club did not pay him.
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Mendy also told the tribunal that former teammates Raheem Sterling, Bernardo Silva and Riyad Mahrez lent him money.
He won several Premier League titles with City and was part of France’s World Cup-winning squad in 2018.
