'Integrity of football inseparable from integrity of the capital that owns, finances it'

GENEVA: Do we really know who owns, finances and ultimately controls football?

This was the question posed by Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) global chief executive officer Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros in his latest article on SIGA’s website, stressing that a shareholders’ register alone could not provide the full answer.

“We must know who stands behind the company or fund; who provides its equity and debt; who its creditors, lenders and guarantors are; what economic or control rights they possess; and whether offshore companies, tax havens, trusts, nominees or shell companies are involved,” said de Medeiros.

“We must identify the ultimate beneficial owners and establish where the money comes from, how it moves and where it ultimately goes.

“These are not technicalities. Ownership confers power over clubs, players and competitions. The integrity of football is therefore inseparable from the integrity of the capital that owns and finances it.”

He highlighted his experience in 2007, when he was then chief executive officer of the Association of European Professional Football Leagues.

“We submitted a position paper to the European Commission addressing the challenges confronting professional football and the measures required to strengthen its credibility and integrity. The Commission subsequently reflected those concerns in its White Paper on Sport, expressly identifying money laundering among the threats facing sport.

“In 2009, the Financial Action Task Force published Money Laundering through the Football Sector. It examined vulnerabilities involving club ownership, player transfers, betting, image rights and sponsorship; referred to tax havens, front companies and politically exposed persons; and found that controls over the origin and destination of payments were often weak or absent. Fifa and Uefa were among the organisations engaged in its preparation.

“The risks were therefore neither unknown nor unforeseen. They had been identified, formally documented and brought directly to the attention of the institutions with the authority to act. That was nearly two decades ago.”

He added that since then, some progress had been made but it was “not enough”.

“For over 30 years, in every role I have exercised at club, league and international level, I have worked to ensure that football and wider sports are recognised for their immense social and economic contribution and treated as credible and responsible sectors.

“I have never accepted the prejudice that regarded sports as institutionally immature or as some sort of underdog in the eyes of governments, international organisations and certain sectors of public opinion. I know football from the inside and have witnessed and contributed to the profound transformation it has undergone.

“When European football faced chronic and persistent indebtedness, I worked alongside Uefa and the professional leagues to confront that reality. The leagues played a decisive role in strengthening club licensing, promoting financial discipline and embedding a culture of financial stability and sustainability.”

That collective effort, according to de Medeiros, led to more robust financial, governance and infrastructure requirements and helped pave the way for Financial Fair Play, drawing on established precedents such as France’s Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion.

“Those reforms proved that football can address structural problems when leadership, regulation and determination come together. That progress makes the continued delay over financial transparency more – not less – difficult to understand,” he added.

The article recorded that between June 1 and Sept 2, Fifa’s Transfer Matching System recorded 12,575 international transfers in men’s professional football, involving approximately US$9.89 billion in declared transfer-fee commitments. England alone accounted for more than US$3 billion in expenditure, while Portugal spent approximately US$301 million and received US$642 million.

Women’s football recorded a further 1,406 international transfers and US$28.6 million in fees – already equivalent to the whole of 2025.

“Yet TMS covers only international transfers. An analysis of reported and estimated fees compiled by Transfermarkt indicates almost EUR3 billion in domestic transfer activity across the leading divisions of England, Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal during the same period. And even these figures do not capture salaries, bonuses, image rights, agents’ commissions, shareholder loans, private credit, transfer-receivable financing or club acquisitions.

“Transfers are not the whole story. They are one window into a wider integrity challenge. Recording a transaction does not establish whose money financed it, what interests are attached to that money, through which structures it travelled or who ultimately benefited.

“Disclosure is not scrutiny, and an investor’s declaration cannot be treated as independent evidence of integrity,” de Medeiros added.