[Feature Image] Doyen Sports, linked with Tevfik Arif, has proven to have the law on its side after having been scrutinized regarding the Football Leaks case.
While the 2015 Football Leaks case did reveal some dubious actions in European football, it has also caught innocent companies in the crossfire. One of them is the Tevfik Arif-linked Doyen Sports, which had confidential documents leaked and was falsely accused of wrongdoings.
Other groups affected by the case are prestigious European football clubs and top football players who have also had personal information disclosed.
The Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto breached his way into the servers of the abovementioned parties and leaked 70 million illegally obtained documents online and to the press.
Rui Pinto has successfully extorted and blackmailed multiple parties via his lawyer, and in Doyen Sports’ case, Rui Pinto said he would avoid leaking information in exchange for a “generous donation” of 500,000 euros.
Doyen Sports’ business model was simple. During 2011-2015, it offered alternative funding to football clubs via loans for working capital and player purchases in exchange for a 10% annual coupon and additional upside if the players were transferred at some point in the future.
The fund was administered by a management team, who had every single deal vetted through lawyers in their respective jurisdictions. There was no wrongdoing in any of it; third-party ownership of footballers was allowed globally until FIFA finally banned it in 2015.
Doyen Sports never gave in to Rui Pinto’s extortion demands and contacted the Portuguese police when the company was offered to pay the “generous donation” in exchange for keeping the documents about Doyen Sports to himself.
Scandals among Real Madrid stars
Like Doyen Sports, lots of other parties of the football industry had documents illegally stolen and leaked by Rui Pinto.
Some of them publicized salaries of the players, transfer fees and contract information, while Cristiano Ronaldo’s rape case was also among the disclosed claims.
In 2017, Rui Pinto revealed to the German newspaper Der Spiegel that Cristiano Ronaldo had been accused of raping the American teacher and model Kathryn Mayorga in 2009 and that the two had reached an out-of-court settlement.
The agreement between Cristiano Ronaldo and Kathryn Mayorga would allegedly give her $375,000 in exchange for keeping the case secret.
The football star has denied the rape and has never been found guilty in court. At the moment, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kathryn Mayorga are awaiting a trial before a federal judge in Nevada who will decide if Kathryn Mayorga was mentally fit to sign the agreement.
Cristiano Ronaldo made headlines again when Rui Pinto leaked documents that allegedly proved that he and the previous Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho had avoided paying tax on millions of dollars.
According to the documents, the two had done it by moving huge sums of money to the British Virgin Islands while they were both employed by Real Madrid.
Even though they both denied it at first, they plead guilty to tax fraud in 2019. Jose Mourinho got a one-year suspended prison sentence, while Cristiano Ronaldo accepted a plea deal, forcing him to pay a €18.8 million fine.
Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was accused of rape and tax evasion. Photo: Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley/Shutterstock.com
Rui Pinto facing charges for Doyen Sports leaks
Rui Pinto, the man behind the leaked documents about Tevfik Arif, Doyen Sports, Cristiano Ronaldo, Jose Mourinho and many more, is currently on trial himself.
The hacker faces 90 criminal charges; among them are computer fraud, attempted extortion and violating privacy correspondence.
There will be court sessions at Lisbon’s central criminal court every week until December. 45 witnesses are expected to testify during the trial.
Rui Pinto is no stranger to hacking, and he has previously faced criminal charges.
In 2013, Rui Pinto hacked the Caledonian Bank, an offshore company registered in the Cayman Islands, and got access to the accounts of all the bank’s clients.
Rui Pinto transferred a total of about $310,000 from the customers’ accounts to his own in Portugal. The amount was divided into two transactions. When Caledonian Bank found out about the illegal transactions, it opened an investigation and tried to figure out who had stolen the money.
A criminal case was also opened, and Rui Pinto was summoned to the judiciary police to be heard in August 2014.
A month later, the Caledonian Bank and Rui Pinto reached a settlement, and the hacker agreed to return $20,367 to the bank, which is half of the amount he gained from his first illegal transaction.
He was allowed to keep the other half. The remaining $267,5 were cancelled by the bank shortly after Rui Pinto’s attempt to steal the money.
There is no doubt that Rui Pinto has a shady past and that he has caused harm to numerous people – some of them innocent like Tevfik Arif and Doyen Sports.
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