French defender, Benjamin Mendy has won his legal battle against his former club Manchester City for the majority of his unpaid wages while he faced rape charges.
Mendy was cleared of raping a woman at his £4m mansion and trying to rape another woman following a trial last year.
City halted Mendy’s £500,000-a-month salary in 2021 when Mendy was arrested for the second time.
Mendy, who joined City for £49m from Monaco in 2017, responded by taking the Premier League champions to an employment tribunal, and he has won the fight for most of his unpaid salary after making a claim for ‘unauthorised deductions’ from his wages.
Mendy’s claim was for around £11m before tax. The tribunal’s verdict means he will be entitled to the majority of this figure but not all of it, having spent approximately five months in custody during the 22 months covered by the claim.
The exact amount is set to be agreed by the parties involved, or will be decided in a future hearing if an agreement cannot be reached.
The tribunal heard that City continued to pay Mendy after his first arrest in November 2020, but changed their stance when he was re-arrested the following year.
But Mendy’s contract stated that he would receive a 900,000 bonus for appearing in 60 per cent of matches, in addition to a £1m bonus if City qualified for the Champions League, and an annual £1.2m payment to his image rights company on top of his salary.
After being charged, Mendy was told by City chiefs that they would not be paying his salary as he was ‘not presently ready and able to perform the obligations of his contract’.
Mendy claims then-chief operating officer Omar Berrada assured him he would receive his wages once acquitted, but the tribunal heard Mendy received no response from Berrada or chief executive Khaldoon Al Mubarak when he reached out to the pair for clarification.