FIFA hit by more damaging leaks after hack of computer systems
A series of disclosures about "dirty deals" at FIFA have been published after internal documents from the football governing body were leaked to the press. The revelations are based on information accessed by the Football Leaks organisation, which handed more than 70 million documents and 3.4 terabytes of data to German magazine Der Spiegel for analysis.
The trove contains evidence that some of Europe's top clubs plan to break away from UEFA and form their own "super league", and that FIFA President Gianni Infantino helped Manchester City and Paris Saint-German avoid punishment for financial fair play rules and "secretly worked to weaken the global football organisation's code of ethics".
Der Spiegel claims that the material comes from a Portuguese football fan identified only as "John", whose disgust with corruption in the sport led him to found Football Leaks and become a whistleblower. John told Der Spiegel that he got the documents from a network of sources and "stresses that neither he nor any of his comrades-in-arms is a hacker", but critics doubt that he could have accessed such a breadth of documents from a variety of organisations without someone conducting a cyber attack.
