In order to get around the financial regulations imposed by France’s Professional Football League, which is responsible for managing and overseeing the proper conduct of clubs in the country’s top two football divisions, AS Monaco developed a system of private agreements, which are legally uncertified deals, with players and their agents. The scheme involved not only agent’s commissions disguised as so-called “scouting agreements” but also, the evidence from Football Leaks documents suggest, a friendly match that was never played between AS Monaco and Manchester United about which neither club agreed to comment upon.
Football club AS Monaco is engulfed in a series of on- and off-field crises. While it is struggling at the bottom of France’s top-flight division Ligue 1, its president was earlier this month formally placed under investigation for suspected corruption (see Mediapart’s detailed revelations here), and the French football authorities have launched a probe into its highly questionable methods of recruitment of under-age players following Mediapart’s report on the subject last week.
