Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa will be the main beneficiary of the Banco Carregosa account, to which a portion of FC do Porto SAD (Sociedade Anónima Desportiva) income of € 40 million will be diverted. This suspicion, which underlies the investigation by a group led by Rosario prosecutor Teixeira and Paulo Silva, head of the tax office, learned about Nasser do SOL from a source familiar with the investigation.
The bill is written in the name of a man now very close to Pinto da Costa, northern businessman José Pedro Pinho, who attacked a TVI image reporter in April and who oversaw the sale of FC Porto players, acting in this context as the frontman of the club’s president. In fact, the money withdrawn from this account mainly served the needs of Pinto da Costa, from offering cars to women in his acquaintances to paying a witch from Matosinhos for various types of witchcraft and predictions, including regarding the future results of FC Porto. football team.
Pigno began his relationship with Alexandre Pinto da Costa, son of the Porto leader, who together formed Energy Soccer, a company that mediates the purchase and sale of passes for football players, including those of the club. Friends since adolescence, until then they were inseparable, even having lived for many years in a luxurious gated community in Maya.
But Pinho hinted at the leader of the Dragons, who began to favor him over his son. At the end of 2016, jealousy flared up in the friendship between them, and Alexander ceded his share to another and created new societies. They then start running along parallel paths. But Pinho, through his own companies – such as Pesarp, N1 and PP Sports – is getting more and more benefits from Pinto da Costa (who, in turn, has had a controversial relationship with his son for a long time).
However, the volume of Pinho’s business relationship with the club began to cause discomfort in the institution. The businessman then found a partner who, while not acting as a real intermediary for the players, decided, according to investigators, to use his company to bill for the services provided by Pedro Pinho. This is Bruno Macedo, who starts invoicing FC Porto through his company BM Consulting. One of the most famous deals of this pair was the transfer of Eder Militau to Real Madrid for 50 million euros.
Operation Extension Suspense investigators said Macedo served as a platform for distributing the amounts calculated for transfers of athletes, apparently, he was the only one promoting. Committees that will benefit Pinto da Costa, Pinho and other elements of FC Porto’s SAD.
Pedro Pinho leaves after the arrest of Rui Pinto
Most of the money deposited in the account of Banco Carregosa (in which Pinho had 5% of the shares), of which Pinto da Costa, according to investigators, will be the main recipient, comes from the business of buying and selling players from FC Porto. Which are now under the scrutiny of the judicial authorities. Basically, amounts that SAD overpays when purchasing footballers or gets less when selling passes are redirected to the account.
Since the arrest in Hungary in 2019 of the Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto, who investigated and published information about the football business in Football Leaks, Pedro Pinho was no longer a safe name to spearhead these operations. Indeed, Rui Pinto spoke to a Portuguese journalist in Budapest about the leading role of Alexander Pinto da Costa and Pinho in these deals, which left the northern businessman in the shadows, and the mediation of the players began to be carried out by Jorge Mendes – a well-known agent of some of the most prominent football players of today, such like Cristiano Ronaldo; and Deco, a former Brazilian player who, after leaving the field, also devoted himself to mediating players.
However, telephone conversations at the beginning of this process indicated that Pinho continued to maintain contact between Pinto da Costa, Jorge Mendes and Deco in these operations.
What “remains” in the form of unannounced commissions for trades brokered by Jorge Mendes (whose company, Gestifute, holds 10% of the cost of the transfers) is deposited into Carregosa’s account. Now investigators see no reason to receive such large sums of Pinho. An example would be the transfer of Fabio Silva, sold to Wolverhampton in 2020 for the official value declared by FC Porto of € 30 million, but which actually remained at € 40 million, with Jorge Mendes retaining 3 million (10%). and received 7 million in the hands of Pinho. But this case was an exception. Most other players, such as Danilo Pereira, had a 5% commission from a Porto businessman.
But the transfers are not only international: the scheme also includes such clubs as Sporting Clube de Braga, Vitória de Guimarães and Tondela, which were searched this week.
Payments to the witch and the monkey
Banco Carregosa’s account, a financial institution specializing in wealth management for high-income clients, functioned like a blue bag for the Pinto da Costa, where money was almost always withdrawn in banknotes. So the witch from Matosinhos was paid about 600 thousand euros at the end of the year. But Fernando Madureira, leader of the Porto support group Super Dragões, received the money in such a way to collect a difficult loan of 60 thousand euros from Pinto da Conta, as well as 100 thousand euros to complete the construction of the house.
But there is another aspect to Operation Extension. The team, led by prosecutor Rosario Teixeira and the Braga tax office, also suspects that there were commissions related to the acquisition by Altice (owner of the telecom operator Meo) of the rights to broadcast FC Porto football matches, damaging the club. by 20 million euros.
The contracts clarified by the investigation show that Bruno Macedo, the intermediary in the deal with Altice in 2015, will receive 10 million euros, half of which he divided equally between Pinho and his son Pinto da Costa. It was agreed that the trio will receive another tranche, which will amount to 20 million euros, but which – with the scandal that had erupted by that time – was not paid.
Although FC Porto was subject to UEFA’s financial fair play rules at the time (a mechanism that prohibits clubs from spending more than their income), a research team led by Rosario Teixeira and Paulo Silva suspects that only between From 2017 to 2021, the purchase of player passes resulted in a loss of $ 30 million for the club, to which an additional $ 10 million must be added as a result of Altice’s acquisition of the rights to televise football matches in FCP.
In addition to these rights relating to the games on Dragau, from 2018 and for ten years, the acquisition of Porto Canal’s broadcasting rights has also been included in the business for 12 and a half seasons since 2016, as well as the privilege of printing the company logo on jerseys football players of FC Porto. In total, FC Porto’s SAD was to receive 457.7 million euros from the Franco-Israeli telecommunications company.
Vieira case
The judicial investigation, against which, in particular, the Porto media are targeting, was the result of the extraction of a certificate from the case of Cartao Vermello, which concerns the former President of Benfica Luis Filipe Vieira, and ended several months ago with his temporary detention.
In general, both cases are named after Braga’s lawyer Bruno Macedo, with references to Vieira and Pinto da Costa. In fact, it all started with the process of the Braga tax office related to the request for compensation from Macedo in 2018.
This week, Monday through Thursday, Operation Extension investigators went in search of various parts of the country. Among the victims were Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa and his son Alexander, Pedro Pinho, Bruno Macedo and Jorge Mendes. All of the SAD Administrators’ offices in Porto have also been finely combed, including those of Fernando Gomes and Adelino Caldeira. Among the materials seized during the search are lists of expenses paid with the “blue bag” to various people close to Pinto da Costa.
The MP believes there is strong evidence of the crimes of fraud, infidelity, qualified tax fraud and money laundering.
Nasser do Sol tried to get a statement from FC Porto’s SAD, but did not receive a response until the end of the publication.