In the summer of 2018, the rape allegation against Ronaldo gained fresh impetus. At the games, he heard about a company named Doyen Sports Investments, backed by Kazakh money, which had been involved in several recent transfers. Europe: number of top division football leagues in Europe from 2009 to 2016 Iceland: revenue breakdown of top tier football clubs 2015-2018, by source Israel: revenue breakdown of top tier . I asked Pinto if he was aware of the irony of being killed by soccer fans. When Football Leaks went live, that fall, Doyen was the common thread in many of the stories. most corrupt football clubs in europesardinia water temperature celsius. The Portuguese media harried him, and his Facebook page rapidly filled with threats from Benfica fans. I learned everything sitting next to him. Pinto became fascinated by the Phoenicians, and by the Iberian and Celtic tribes that settled in Portugal before the Romans came. That lifetime ban was eventually overturned on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but bin Hammam was subsequently issued a second one in 2012 as a result of 'conflicts of interest' that emerged relating to his role as AFC president. When the judge ordered that Pinto and his data be handed over to the Portuguese authorities, Bourdon slapped his rollerboard suitcase in frustration. It was a rape case. The documents included a settlement agreement, signed on January 12, 2010, between a Ms P and Mr D, in which Ms P was paid three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Answers in the earliest version of the document appeared to corroborate Mayorgas account: X: She said that she didnt want to, but she made herself available. They play in Lisbon (great), they have a massive stadium and theyve had players like Eusebio, Pablo Aimar, Simao Sabrosa and Angel di Maria. The magazines I.T. The emails discussed the bribing of referees and other scandalous activities. Porto and Benfica, Portugals biggest teams; Olympique Marseilles, a leading French club; and F.C. The stadium was full of cameras. In the evening, Buschmann took Pinto to the Gerteraum and showed him the problem. Equipped with usernames and passwords, the hacker had ordered the transfers to a Deutsche Bank account in Lisbon registered to Rui Pinto. Pinto became part of what is known as Portugals gerao rasca (generation in trouble). Between them, the clubs have won the Portuguese league sixty-five times. On Friday, October 11th, Pinto received a second windfall from Caledonian Bankthis time from an account belonging to NetJets, the private-jet-rental companyof 227,332.80. He is also a hero to everyone who hates Benfica. Supporters of other clubs refer to Benfica as the Octopus and to the supposed shadowy nature of its influence in Portuguese society as Benfiquisto, or Benficastan. I've had that and pretended to be deaf and dumb for the next few minutes and talk about something else. Forgot password? Thomas Drage, a 24-year-old attacking midfielder at Troms (and one-time winner of the fantastically named Polar Bear of the Year award), said in a 2012 interview that players from the north are handicapped when it comes to international recognition as the domestic media tend to focus on southern clubs. On September 18th, Pinto had 31.67 in his checking account. was Bruno de Carvalho, the president of Sporting Lisbon, who described it as a monster coming to football. FIFA, soccers global governing body, banned the practice in May, 2015. I say to that club: 'I can sell him for 5m in England there will be 500,000 in it for you but the other 2.5m makes its way back into this account'. A meeting was arranged for October 21st, near Lisbon. I really dont consider myself as a hacker, he told me. Our story nearly was atomized, Wulzinger said. Francisco Teixeira da Mota, Pintos Portuguese lawyer, told me that he expected prosecutors to try to add the theft of Benficas e-mails to the case. Why European Soccer Is Damned and Thrilling at the Same Time. When I visited, the Intella home screen showed some sixteen million e-mails, eighty-five thousand presentations, six hundred and eighty thousand spreadsheets, and a hundred and five thousand contacts in the Football Leaks database. Lets see whats in here. The file contained e-mails between U.S. and Portuguese lawyers about an alleged incident that had taken place at the Palms Place Hotel, in Las Vegas, on the night of June 12, 2009. We like to think of football as pure, something for enjoyment that unites people the world over. Since 2016, Der Spiegel has partnered with media organizations in thirteen European countries to publish hundreds of stories, rewriting much of what was known about the soccer business and changing it in the process. It is one thing to copy themit is another thing to have access to them, a member of his legal team told me. NEW YORK Two former Fox executives went on trial Tuesday, accused of bribing South American soccer officials for TV rights to one of the continent's biggest . Not just that, but according to Colin Gordon, English football is considered 'the dirty man of Europe'. That spring, Pinto decided to pause Football Leaks for six months, to enable Der Spiegel to work through the data. Im aware of that., The following week, Pinto had an extradition hearing at Budapests central courthouse. The information provided by Pinto has led to the conviction of dozens of top soccer players for tax evasion. 2023 Cond Nast. The message arrived early in the afternoon of September 29, 2015. Pinto followed the Portuguese team, captained by Ronaldo, obsessively. Porto, won the Champions League, led by a brash, exacting coach named Jos Mourinho. It changed my life, he said, not entirely unhappily. pandoc templates folder; derral - deep mysteries. Six weeks later, the leaks started again. But the story gained little traction. (A UEFA investigation later calculated its true market value to be around fifteen million.) But Pinto is a confounding figure. Although Gordon refused to reveal the identity of the managers he suspects are taking back-handers, he claimed tens of millions of pounds have been siphoned from the game since the formation of the Premiership. I was nearly to death, Buschmann told me. The data from the first transaction were garbled, but the second transfer appeared to have been executed at 5:46 A.M. on October 10th, from a computer-science lab at the University of Porto. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. In 1885, the English FA decided to make it permissible for a club to pay players, but only if they were born or had lived for at least two years within a six mile radius of the club's ground. Agnelli, who could face trial over allegations of false accounting at Juventus, was famously one of the architects of the failed attempt to set up the breakaway European Super League in 2021. The corridor outside the courtroom filled with news crews and lawyers. One of the ways that clubs make money is by buying and selling players. team worked on this for weeks, Buschmann said. At that time, he had been preparing to challenge Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency, but was suspended when an investigation was launched into allegations he offered bribes for votes. Pinto had worried about being publicly identified, and about how best to defend himself, for some time. Porto, seeking seventeen million euros in damages. I got shocked, Pinto told me. But its part of the job. One evening in 2017, Buschmann was in a restaurant, watching Madrids two major clubs compete for a place in the Champions League final. Pinto confided in Buschmann. In early June, Marques handed the Benfica e-mails to the police. Yeah, he replied. But he would continue to look for secrets. Let's be honest though, with a name like that he was always going to be in the headlines. Pinto maintained that the second transfer was a banking error and that the money from the first one belonged to him. Portugal is a lovely country for a holiday, he told me. Money above all. CONCACAF General SecretaryBlazer was initially investigated for failure to file personal income tax returns and quickly agreed to inform as part of the rest of the investigation. Below are the 13 most corrupt countries in the European Union, according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Definitely not a guy you want to be your father-in-law!! Unfortunately, the sport we love so much is rotten and it is time to say enough. Below was a collection of previously unseen documents involving Sporting Lisbon, the eighteen-time winner of Portugals national league. More and more events started to appear and to show everyone how doomed was Portugal., In 2013, Pinto took part in a study-abroad program in Budapest. Ronaldo has protested his innocence throughout. And then you think, I would need to know the raw income in Ireland. It was around 5 P.M. and Pinto hadnt yet eaten breakfast. Every team has bad days. It was powerful, Varela said. We are the worst and it shouldn't be accepted. Sadly, Basaksehir recently terminated the loan contract of Arda Turan, whose own criminal activity involved firing a gun in a hospital after aggressively saying weird stuff to a pop stars wife. They think they are untouchable. One transaction that Pinto pieced togethera loan deal between F.C. But, on a Tuesday afternoon that April, Francisco Marques, the communications director for F.C. The Italian clubs, though, have remained silent, with both now having moved far beyond any of the calciopoli scandals of over ten years ago. Raheem Sterling. had been available. When they returned to Pintos street, there were police cars and men in uniform. Better remembered by history as head of East Germany's notorious Stasi for more than 30 years until the fall of the Berlin wall, Erich Mielke also had his hands deep in East German football. Bourdon was there, wearing a long green overcoat. Today, youve got a club, Istanbul Basaksehir, whose close ties to Erdogans government give it actual villain credentials. He's been all over the world attending seminars for that insight and probably got the best seats at the World Cup. On an overcast morning in March, I sat in the Gerteraum with Buschmann, his editor, Michael Wulzinger, and Nicola Naber, a researcher, who have been the principal custodians of Pintos data since the spring of 2016. Brazilian law means he cant be extradited. Again Ukraine shares scores with Uganda and the Comoros as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. On October 3rd, four days after Pinto posted the first documents, Lucas received an e-mail in excellent Portuguese from someone calling himself Artem Lobuzov. The company hired a Portuguese security firm to study its servers. In reality, however, PSG are more Skechers than Air Jordan. In 2011, Portugal accepted a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. I know it was a nave attitude. In early November, Lobuzov announced that he was walking away. Politicians, prosecutorseven police detectivesthey lose their focus when it comes to football, he said. I think the attached images will suffice, the source wrote, including screenshots of three Benfica officials in-boxes. I wanted basically to see the reaction, he said. On the one hand, theres a certain prestige associated with Juve. Its like an extra weight over my shoulders, he told me. In the transcript, Mayorga was identified as Ms C: Question: Did Ms C ever raise her voice, scream, or yell? During the summer of 2016, the European Championship was held in France. I arrived early, with Buschmann. There was a risk of inciting him to hack. Buschmann left the room to make coffee. The following summer, Pinto approached William Bourdon, who specializes in whistle-blower cases, and asked him to broker a meeting. The emails discussed the bribing of referees and other scandalous activities. The police said no. A poor, fragile cat. Extraditions between E.U. On a dazzling morning in April, four of the eight newspapers on sale in town had stories about him on the front page. YOU. Kind regards, FL. That evening, confidential contracts related to the image rights of Cristiano Ronaldo, at that time the star forward for Real Madrid, appeared on the blog. Rangers, in full Rangers Football Club, also called Rangers FC, bynames the Gers and the Light Blues, Scottish professional football (soccer) club based in Glasgow. Theyve bought some of the best and most expensive players in the world, at least one of whom really doesnt want to play for them, and theyve done this Nike collaboration thing with Michael Jordan targeting fans beyond football. And there was the recent decision by the club to abandon its 116-year-old striped kit in favour of a half black, half white number. There was something in him, Buschmann told me. Pintos father, Francisco, designed dress shoes at a local factory. He was in the sixth year of a three-year history degree. Wulzinger showed me the paperwork for the transfer of Paul Pogba, the midfielder for the World Cup-winning French national team, who moved from Juventus to Manchester United for a hundred and five million euros in the summer of 2016. It was extremely hard for me at that time to realize the extent of the wrongdoings, he said. In Portugal, one of the most vehement critics of T.P.O. EBay at that time was an extremely awesome opportunity, Pinto recalled. How Football Leaks Is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer While Rui Pinto sits in jail, his revelations are bringing down the sport's most famous teams and players. But there was a glitch: thousands of documents werent showing up in the Intella software. The United Kingdom. Ad Choices. "Over here, you will never catch a manager talking directly about it. They partied for two days. "I've encountered it once abroad when I was taking an international player to an Italian club and I was offered a suitcase full of money to make sure the deal went through. They also have hugely successful academy and national team programs that feed into their success. We have to say to the corrupt to the bent managers and agents to take their ill-gotten gains and be thankful they have got away with it. Its true, there is a risk. Back when you were young, the bad thing about Turkish opposition was fans setting off flares. The World Cup shows how money and media saturation have changed the nature of fandom. Jean-Jacques Eydelie was the individual asked to make the connection as he had previously played with some of the Valenciennes squad at Nantes. La tua registrazione quasi ultimata, ti abbiamo inviato una mail per confermare la tua The police had taken his DVR. But he never followed through. He excluded personal gossip and salacious material, and focussed on evidence of Benficas attempts to control the Portuguese game. Anyone else have the feeling that we haven't seen the last of Blatter in football?! We'd like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates. What did Lionel Messis wife Antonela Roccuzzo say about Shakiras song. The warrant made no mention of the Benfica e-mails and the subsequent embarrassment for Portugals biggest soccer club, which Pinto was convinced were the real reasons for his arrest. We were in his apartment in Budapest. When they arrived at Pintos apartment, on a quiet, residential street in Budapests seventh district, they couldnt open their luggage. Pinto was uneasy. The source described himself as a Porto fan but a critic of the clubs president. GestiFute, a Portuguese soccer agency that represents Ronaldo and Mourinho, and whose president, Jorge Mendes, is one of the most powerful figures in the game, dismissed the article as a piece of journalistic fiction. Ronaldo scored two goals in the first game against Munich and a hat trick in the second. Hundreds of thousands of people emigrated. He loved the light on the Danube and the cobbled streets. The programme couldn't prove anything and I'm pretty sure Lord Stevens' inquiry will struggle big time to come up with any proof. Pinto was never charged with a crime. On October 19th, the police raided Benficas Estdio da Luz, in northern Lisbon. But, for years, the teams with the wealthiest owners seemed to benefit from suspiciously generous sponsorship and marketing deals, which helped to keep their finances in line. Pinto was joined by a lawyer for Doyen and by Lucas, who was wearing a wire. Thats not to say City havent done some cool things over the years though. Buschmann and John began exchanging messages every few hours. In truth though, supporting an unsuccessful team is much better than supporting a team thats just plain embarrassing. I was totally electrified to get a hand on this data, he told me. (In 2017, the Brazilian striker Neymar was sold by Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for around a quarter of a billion dollars.) After he returned to Budapest, Pinto resolved to move to France in February. Lucas reported the e-mail to the Portuguese police, who had already received a complaint about Football Leaks from Sporting Lisbon. entrerai a far parte della community di Calciomercato.com. In fact, the club television channel Benfica TV, decided to showcase images of the most corrupt clubs in Europe, an adaption of a story from the English daily newspaper Daily Mail. would be more embarrassing than the Gallaghers still having those haircuts. That's where the money goes missing'. In February, 2015, Pinto moved to Hungary for good. The operation, supported by Europol and in cooperation with the Spanish Tax Agency, led to five prosecutions. Maybe she got some bruises when I grabbed her. My father once said that football will destroy my life, because I was kind of a fanatic, actually, he told me. Disqus. Mesut zil, an ethereal German playmaker for Arsenal, the team that I support, generated eighty-six hundred and twenty-nine. At the same time, he worried that the data might be stolen. They were real documents.. But Varela was struck by the technical nature of the documents. most corrupt football clubs in europe. One image had been taken in the previous half hour. There are hundreds of professional and amateur football teams in Poland; which are organized into the national 1st . The change in date of the World Cup to accommodate the awarding of hosting duties to Qatar has meant a change in the usual summertime tournament. When Pinto was back in Vila Nova de Gaia, he had travelled to a few away matches with the teams hard-core supporters club, the Super Dragons. The best leagues are awash in Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds, and Chinese conglomerates. The club faces a potential ban from the Champions League. In the following three years, Pinto supplied Der Spiegel with four terabytes of confidential information, more than eighty-eight million documentsa leak almost twice the size of the Panama Papers and sixty times that of Edward Snowdens. The administrators jumping on the bandwagon are laughable. He added: "The Football League trumpet about how the agents' fees are dropping. Paris Saint-Germain are trying really, really hard to be a global brand. Two plainclothes officers sat at a nearby table. Monumental Champions League collapses against Barcelona (2017) and Manchester United (2019) mean you dont even fear or envy the mega-rich club. This is Euro Football Daily - your new home of football from across the continent. The location had been chosen by the police. Why Las Vegas? The idea of a soccer Super League has been around since the late nineteen-eighties. His mother, Maria, looked after him and his sister, who is ten years older. THE CASE OF BRUCE GROBBELAAR Britain's Sun newspaper alleged that former Liverpool and Southampton goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar took 40,000 to make sure Liverpool lost 3-0 away to Newcastle in 1993. Crystal Palace 0-0 Manchester United LIVE: Wout Weghorst STARTS as Erik ten Hag's side look to win their Manchester United will NOT rush Jadon Sancho back too quickly after he returned to group training for the Cristiano Ronaldo is struggling to hire a 4,500-a-month chef for his 17m home on the Portuguese Riviera MIKE KEEGAN: Temporary concussion substitutes will NOT be trialled in the Premier League, as Sportsmail Nottingham Forest 'are considering a move for PSG goalkeeper Keylor Navas' after Dean Henderson's injury Mic'd up referees will announce their reasons behind VAR decisions to fans in stadiums and on TV at next West Ham's loan enquiry for Harry Maguire is rejected by Manchester United - with Erik ten Hag adamant his English kit manufacturer Rhino threaten LEGAL ACTION against organisers of the Rugby World Cup as the Lewis Hamilton is not currently part ofSir Jim Ratcliffe's bid to buy Manchester United despite their close 'I don't know, Jeff! How football's volatile 48 hours unfolded The 12-team Super League, set up by the seven afore-mentioned teams and Spain's Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid and Italy's AC Milan and. This January, the highest fee spent by a non-Premier League club from a major league has been the signing of Cesar Montes by La Liga outfit Espanyol, who paid 8m to bring him in from Mexican side Monterrey - 1m less than the fee Chelsea paid Atletico to loan Joao Felix for five months. The fight has been hard, John wrote. Pinto was released under house arrest. "We're not just talking about the 50,000 bungs Panorama were alleging. "Some of the people involved in the game haven't a clue. Giuseppe Signori, Mauro Bressan (scorer of an iconic bicycle in the Champions League for Fiorentina) and Cristiano Doni were the most famous names involved in the match fixing scandal that rocked Italian football in 2011, but the actions of lower league goalkeeper Marco Paoloni were shocking. Anbal Pinto flew south, from Porto. For all Johns bravado, it was clear that Football Leaks was having problems. JUVE SECOND, MILAN SIXTH - Not only have Porto, Benficas historic rival, made the list, but there are also several Italian clubs appearing as well. deals, and a network of Argentine agents who used shell companies and straw men in the Netherlands to evade taxes. But there were times when they needed him. But we can talk. Contents1 What football team has the [] A senior Benfica official compared the leaks to being under a terrorist attack. If you look at the Portuguese people, most of the young people, they dont want to get involved in any of this, he said. The first was about how the most profligate clubsnamely, the Qatar-backed Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabis royal familyhad been able to defy the sports spending rules. I just pretended that nothing happened and that is all, he said. Football after Rui Pinto is better., While Pinto awaits his trial, he is being held at a prison next to police headquarters, in central Lisbon. The first hard drives that Pinto gave to Buschmann contained around eighteen million files. "Let's say I buy a player from eastern Europe. That is a risk that can happen at any moment, he said. Pinto sometimes refers to real fans, who will demand a financial and moral overhaul of the sport, as the intended audience for Football Leaks. In 2017, Football Leaks published confidential emails allegedly stolen from the Portuguese club, the contents of which were highly embarrassing. When he arrived at his student dormin a complex of large Soviet-era apartment buildings in the east of the cityhe experienced a sense of release. The Football Leaks data showed that, in the summer of 2012, P.S.G. Pinto sees the future currently awaiting European soccer as bland and predictable. Comments. We dont know anything. The police raided the clubs offices twice in the early months of 2018. By Sam Knight May 27,. There are many different ways to attack a rival club. When I visited him, in late February, he wore a Levis T-shirt, jeans, and an electronic tag on his left ankle. The European football team with the highest midpoint enterprise value in 2022 was Real Madrid, with approximately 3.2 billion euros, followed closely by Manchester United with 2.9 billion euros . Its an interesting and laughable decision, as the Portuguese club is likely pointing the finger at rivals Porto, who are listed as the third most corrupt club. Marques asked the sender how he could be sure that it was real. He thought that a disaffected lawyer might be responsible. Rangers Football Club. Feed-Educate-Empower-Develop. T.P.O., which originated in Latin America, allows external parties to buy a stake in promising young players, in the hope of profiting from a huge transfer deal one day. The team in the Gerteraum decided to pursue two stories that had eluded European soccer journalists for years. I thought, O.K. One evening, taking the subway in Hamburg, Buschmann realized that he was standing on the wrong platform. In the last months of the Benfica Market, which has gone quiet since Pintos arrest, the blog took on a broader, anarchic quality, posting e-mails from one of Portugals largest law firms, and also secret judicial documents. He messaged Buschmann, This is the most important day of my life.. Mohammed bin Hammam Formerly the chairman of the Qatar Football Association and later president of the Asian Football. There was that 2006 relegation for match fixing, which saw the club stripped of two Serie A titles. They suspected that something was going on, Pinto said. In the following days, Lucas shared his conversation with Lobuzov with detectives from the countrys cyber-crime unit. The Old Lady of Italian football, Juventus is second defeated, and sixth place goes to Milan, with Fiorentina in seventh and Lazio in ninth. A few days later, Marques received about twenty gigabytes of internal Benfica e-mails. Something was not O.K. The doors closed before the man got on. But that's not where the corruption is. You certainly wouldnt want that, right? Its also pretty great that a 42-year-old Gigi Buffon is still knocking about. Pinto took Buschmann to a Serbian restaurant to watch the game, and ordered a meat platter. On October 5th, Lobuzov said that a payment of between five hundred thousand and a million euros would be a good donation to make the material disappear. They accept everything so easily.. what time does elementary school start in las vegas; most corrupt football clubs in europe. Get your Serie A news faster with our free app, donwnload it here: JUVE SECOND, MILAN SIXTH - Not only have Porto, Benficas historic rival, made the list, but there are also several Italian clubs appearing as well. On July 19th, Lucas had received a file named Players, supposedly from an official at F.C. I didn't want it. I once asked Pinto whether he was an idealist, and he surprised me by seeming not to know the word. After the Lobuzov e-mails, Lucas had hired Marclay Associates, a London-based private intelligence firm, to unmask Football Leaks. He opened a laptop and looked it up. MORE INFO. There is a principle of proportionalityof the violation of the law compared to the services rendered. The biggest plot twist ever.. The United Kingdom. The leading articles were about Ronaldos finances, Doyens aggressive T.P.O. I immediately explained, this is a young Portuguese kid, Pinto recalled. It showed that Madrid had announced a fictitious, lower fee, in order not to offend Madrids star player, Ronaldo, who was acquired for ninety-four million euros. When he appeared, led by two thickset Hungarian police officers, he looked like a student on a Eurail trip gone wrong. In 1901, the same FA imposed a maximum weekly wage of 4 per player in even the top football clubs. The bank refused to name the victim of the first transaction and the lab at the university did not keep computer-use records for more than seven days. The club was fined a hundred and eighty thousand euros, and was banned from European competition for three years. It is maybe something paranoid, he told me. A confidential side letter identified Ms P as Kathryn Mayorga, a former model who was then working at an elementary school, and Mr D as Cristiano Ronaldo. Storied teams such as Liverpool and Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus, rise and fall. He read about attempts by the German tax authorities to trace money that had been moved offshore. It is not fair. It appeared to include an internal media-briefing document belonging to Benfica, F.C. The club is the most successful team in the world in terms of domestic league championships won, with more than 50. Four days later, Lobuzov e-mailed to say that his lawyer was waiting for Lucas to make contact. Pinto claims that he learned to read by listening to soccer commentators and matching the names that he heard against what was written on the players shirts. Dont do itIm not like the others. I apologized afterward. 10/03/2021. They play in Lisbon (great), they have a massive stadium and theyve had players like Eusebio. Between clubs, its not only that we dont trust each other, a director of a top European club told me. Below are the 13 most cor They were framing the problems with too much accuracy, Varela said. Varelas story filled two pages of Record the following day. Finally, there was that brilliantly thought-out tweet that shrugged off serious allegations against Cristiano Ronaldo because he was, er, a great champion. I already had something similar with him, Pinto explained. It's the supporters' money.

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