By Mark Baber
May 24 – German prosecutors in Frankfurt have filed charges of tax evasion against former DFB Presidents Wolfgang Niersbach (pictured left) and Theo Zwanziger and the DFB Secretary General Horst R. Schmidt.
May 21 – Chelsea’s billionaire Russian owner Roman Abramovich, whose club won a distinctly unexciting FA Cup on Saturday to save their season, faced delays in renewing his UK visa and did not attend the game, according to reports.
May 9 – More than six months after a judge in Paraguay authorised the extradition to the United States of former Conmebol boss Nicolás Leoz, alleged to have been one of the masterminds in the FIFAGate corruption scandal but who has so far managed to escape the clutches of US prosecutors, now appears to be closer than ever to finally being brought to justice.
April 27 – In an important case that could potentially have implications for player image rights, a European court has ruled that Argentina and Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi, can trademark his own name for use on sports and clothing equipment.
April 12 – The Beautiful Game. A matter more serious than life or death, if you believe Mr Shankley. However, far from complementing the beauty of the game, off-field misdemeanours within the business of football are increasingly stealing the headlines. This time the scandal hitting the headlines concerns Derby County FC and Sam Rush, its former President and CEO. The Rams dismissed Mr Rush for gross misconduct and breach of fiduciary duty in May 2017.
April 11 – Barcelona forward Munir El Haddadi has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in his bid to switch national allegiance from Spain to Morocco ahead of the World Cup.
April 11 – Scores of English professional footballers are facing huge fines for investing in a tax avoidance scheme, according to the country’s Daily Mirror newspaper.
March 22 – Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into last year’s sale of AC Milan by Silvio Berlusconi’s holding company to a Chinese consortium, according to Reuters quoting a judicial source.
March 22 – The crackdown by Spanish authorities to prevent elite footballers getting even richer by beating the tax system has struck again, with former Liverpool and Real Madrid star Xabi Alonso facing a possible five-year jail term after being accused of fraud.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 20 – A British football agent who claims he missed out on a lucrative World Cup sponsorship deal because of FIFA’s behaviour has finally won the right to take the organisation to court in the UK.
March 8 – Former FIFA vice-president Jeffrey Webb has had his sentence in the FIFA-gate scandal pushed back for a seventh time after submissions in court were accepted earlier this week.
March 8 – Colleagues of Sandro Rosell, once one of the most influential figures in European club football as the former president of Barcelona, have launched a social media campaign to request his release from jail after nine months of detention.
February 27 – FIFA have decided to take no action in a dispute between Paris St Germain’s Brazilian star Neymar and his previous club Barcelona over an alleged unpaid €26 million loyalty bonus.
By Paul Nicholson
February 22 – The next round of sentencing has begun in the US Department of Justice case against football’s corrupt officials and marketing partners with Panama-based Mimo International Exports and Imports ordered to pay a fine and restitution totalling $1.4 million for bribing Costa Rica’s former FA president Eduardo Li (pictured).
February 20 – Former coach Barry Bennell, the serial paedophile whose sickening treatment of aspiring youngsters mainly in the 1980s rocked British football, was sentenced to 31 years in jail on Monday for 50 counts of child sexual abuse.