Professional football is about to be the latest victim in a massive data leak; but it is the nature of the leak that are going to change a lot of things. A group calling itself “Football Leaks” has shared some 1.9 TB worth of documents with German newspaper der Spiegel detailing a massive corruption scandal among Europe’s top footballers and clubs.
Details of the corruption are not yet revealed; with Der Spiegel preparing to release the information gradually. There are 19.6 million documents to be released; which makes this the largest ever data breach in sports history. This isn’t the first time that the German paper has been privy to such information, as it was also part of the group that overlooked the Edward Snowden files.
What we do know is that Cristiano Ronaldo and Mesut Ozil were mentioned specifically as conducting tax evasion to increase their own earnings. That being said, this shouldn’t come as a surprise as a number of other footballers – including Lionel Messi and Neymar – have been investigated for not paying taxes.
According to the leak, there are also details of secret side deals, emails, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets. Whether it changes anything in the status quo is still uncertain; but with FIFA looking to clean up its image, this could spell trouble for a lot of people.
[Source: Der Spiegel]
