Jorge Mendès

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.

Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo, currently under investigation in Spain, where he resides, over his alleged wilful evasion of 14.7 million euros in tax payments between 2011 and 2014, created a trust in Jersey in 2015 from which millions of euros were transferred to a subsidiary in Luxembourg and which did not appear in his 2015 tax declaration, according to confidential documents analysed by Mediapart and its partners in the journalistic consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC). The trust was abruptly wound down last week, just 24 hours after the EIC contacted the footballer and his agent for comment on the documents.

Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, owner and chairman of French football club AS Monaco, held, via his own investment fund, economic rights in football players, some of whom played for Monaco, according to documents obtained from the whistle-blowing Football Leaks platform by the journalistic consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), in which Mediapart is a founding partner. The Third-Party Ownership investments, which raised clear issues of a potential conflict of interest, were mounted in association with football ‘super-agent’ Jorge Mendes, who himself made at least 6.85 million euros from the deals. Michel Henry, Agathe Duparc, Michaël Hajdenberg and Yann Philippin report.

Part of the earnings of Argentine footballers Angel Di Maria and Javier Pastore, both currently with French Ligue 1 side Paris Saint-Germain, are paid into tax havens, according to documents obtained by the journalistic collective European Investigative Collaborations via the whistleblowing platform Football Leaks. The documents also reveal the activities of an informal but organised group of Argentine agents, operating to a backdrop of secret commissions, match-fixing and the placing of players in the Argentina national side in order to boost their market value. Michaël Hajdenberg, Michel Henry and Yann Philippin report.

Beginning in 2008, Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo channelled just under 150 million euros earned from commercial deals into the Caribbean tax haven of the British Virgin Islands and in Switzerland, according to documents from the whistle-blowing platform Football Leaks and revealed by Mediapart and its media partners in the European Investigative Collaborations consortium. After first avoiding the scrutiny of the Spanish tax authorities, the Real Madrid player wound down the offshore company involved in the scheme, escaping a potential tax payment of 31 million euros. Michael Hajdenberg, Michel Henry and Yann Philippin report.