It takes courage to be a whistle-blower.
The convention is that the individual
is an insider outraged by the corrupt,
illicit, illegal and/or immoral behaviour
of bosses or colleagues; the righteous
putting integrity ahead of job security
and friendships.
But, sometimes, all may not be
quite as it seems...
This is the conundrum concerning
“John”, now revealed as Rui Pedro
Goncalves Pinto, whose “Football
Leaks” exploits have brought sleepless
nights to football’s high and mighty.
Pinto is 30, Portuguese and lives in
the Hungarian capital of Budapest,
which provides him with a lifestyle he
believes his own country trashed long
ago. Or, at least, this is where he lives
right now, under house arrest with an
electronic tag on one ankle.
Portugal has launched extradition
proceedings, while police investigators
in Belgium, France, Switzerland and
the USA want access to the 70million
documents in his database.
Football Leaks exploded last
autumn when Pinto handed Der
Spiegel a vast cache of documents.
The German news magazine shared
these with the European Investigative
Collaboration, comprising 15 European
news outlets. Their own investigative
teams cross-checked the hacked files,
comparing hidden confidentiality with
disclosed information.
But Pinto’s story goes back to 2013,
when he hacked into a Caledonian
Bank branch in the Cayman Islands.
He skimmed €270,000 but was
caught and only negotiated his way
out of trouble because the bank
feared the publicity of a court case.
In 2015, working from his bedroom
in the family home in Gaia, near
Oporto, Pinto hacked into the transfer
secrets of the player investor Doyen
Sports and delved into its connections
to Sporting and Porto, a number of
illicit commissions and some murky
business at Benfica.
Doyen pursued Pinto, whodemanded money in return for his
files. Nothing, apparently, was paid.
In the spring of 2016 he cast his
cybernet wider and began a steady
drip-feed into the public domain:
secret cash clauses in Neymar’s
Barcelona contract; tax avoidance
schemes which proved costly for
Cristiano Ronaldo and Jose Mourinho;
Swansea City’s transfer dealings during
Michael Laudrup’s managerial spell;
and revelations about Paris Saint-
Germain’s accounts.
Then there was silence – until last
November, when it all started again,
with Der Spiegel boasting imminent
“disclosures about the ‘dirty deals’
of the football world”, promising
“dozens of articles will dive deep
into the business of European
football – a billion-euro industry”.
German champions Bayern Munich
were the initial target of Der Spiegel,
which used the leaked material toKeir
RADNEDGE
THE INSIDERclaim the club’s senior directors “spent
months forging its plan for a Super
League with the most powerful and
the richest football clubs in Europe”.
Real Madrid were named as leading
plotters, along with supposed interest
from Barcelona, Manchester United,
Milan, Juventus, Chelsea, Arsenal, Paris
Saint-Germain, Manchester City and
Liverpool, plus invitees Atletico Madrid,
Marseille, Internazionale, Roma and
Borussia Dortmund.
Some clubs denied it; some did
not bother.
In Switzerland, newspaper Ta g e s
Anzeiger preferred to focus on FIFA
president Gianni Infantino, stating:
“Infantino vowed to clean up the
world’s most hated sports organization.
Confidential documents reveal how
hollow his promises were.”
Tages Anzeiger, feeding off Football
Leaks, questioned Infantino’s role
in the 2026 World Cup award, the
redrafting of FIFA’s ethics set-up, the
acceleration of development-cash
distribution and “teaming up with an
investor that had not followed normal
public tender procedures” over the
revamping of the Club World Cup.
It also picked up on Infantino’s role,
while at UEFA, in negotiations over
Financial Fairplay breaches by PSG
and Manchester City. Both FIFA and
UEFA shrugged off the tales “due to
confidentiality obligations which [we]
must respect”, but UEFA president
Aleksander Ceferin did respond thatWhistle-blowers
are playing a
dangerous game
Breaking news...
German magazine
Der SpiegelPrayers...
Anas Aremeyaw
Anas (centre) with
work colleaguesTHE WORLD THIS MONTH