By Paul Nicholson
October 7 – The growth of the beoutQ broadcast piracy operation that has seen the emergence of beoutQ-enabled set-top boxes being retailed in countries around the world suffered a derailment in a London court on Friday with the conviction of a shop owner on two charges of copyright theft and two charges of fraud.
October 3 – Cardiff City have decided to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against FIFA’s ruling that they must pay the first instalment of €6 million to Nantes for €17 million striker Emiliano Sala who died in January when the light aircraft carrying him to Cardiff two days after he signed crashed into the sea before he could play a single game.
October 2 – The former president of Valencia Juan Soler (pictured) has been jailed for two years for conspiring to kidnap his one-time vice-president and break into his home.
By Paul Nicholson
September 27 – FIFA’s move to reform the player transfer market are unlikely to go far enough to appease critics who say that in reality all the measures will do is keep the current system in place and postpone the issues indefinitely.
September 26 – The Swiss parliament has narrowly voted to extend the mandate of the country’s attorney general Michael Lauber despite a series of undocumented private meetings he held with FIFA president Gianni Infantino during his office’s handling of numerous cases of alleged FIFA-related corruption since 2015.
September 24 – Two people who illegally accessed CCTV footage of Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala’s post-mortem examination and who were “driven by morbid curiosity” have been jailed.
September 20 – Days after the lawyer representing Rui Pinto, whose string of incriminating leaks shook the footballing world before he was controversially extradited from Hungary to his native Portugal, denounced the Portuguese authorities for holding his client without charge, over 100 charges have been brought against the hacker-cum-whistleblower.
By Samindra Kunti
September 20 – Former Anderlecht general manager Herman Van Holsbeeck has been charged with money laundering, forgery and criminal conspiracy for his alleged role in transfer fraud.
September 20 – Sports law association Rex Sport has opened its Master in International Sports Law programme for applications for the 2020 academic year. The one-year course is run in conjunction with the CEU IAM Business School in Spain.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 19 – The lawyer representing Rui Pinto, whose string of incriminating leaks shook the footballing world before he was controversially extradited from Hungary to his native Portugal, has denounced the Portuguese authorities for holding his client without charge and claims he would never have been jailed in other leading western democracies based on the accusations against him.
September 17 – Police in Italy have arrested 12 Juventus ‘ultra’ fans over allegations of blackmail and extortion including threatening to chant racist slogans if they weren’t provided with tickets to games.
September 12 – Relevent Sports, the promoter of the International Champions Cup which is building a business on taking international clubs to play in the US, has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation (USSF).
By Paul Nicholson
August 14 – When Jeff Webb was president of Concacaf he was always a pretty cool cat – approachable, friendly, always reasonable, nice guy to be around and pretty generous with it. Since his US Justice Department indictment in 2015 on corruption chrages he has needed all of a cat’s nine lives to stave off sentencing.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 12 – The bitter dispute between La Liga and the Spanish FA (RFEF) over which days are eligible for league matches has been resolved with a judge ruling that Fridays are fine but imposing a blanket ban on games being played on Monday nights.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 6 – Almost three years after opening an investigation, Swiss prosecutors have indicted three of German football’s most prominent former administrators over suspect payments linked to the 2006 World Cup which the country hosted.