Turkish superagent Ahmet Bulut once confessed to not really understanding football. An unlikely claim from a former professional goalkeeper, but for sure no one could ever accuse him of not understanding the football business; players want him representing them and clubs want his players. Even the football world’s top agent, Jorge Mendes, chose Bulut as his partner in Turkey when he started doing deals there in 2010.

The extent of the relationship, however, as well as Bulut’s role in the mass transfer of Mendes’s players to the Turkish club Beşiktaş in 2010 and 2011, was obscure.

Dozens of emails, invoices, and contracts reveal that Bulut was a key player in during the transfer of seven players, and one manager, to Beşiktaş during Yıldırım Demirören’s presidency. And that Bulut secretly earned almost €3 million in undisclosed fees from this partnership with Mendes, all of which he shifted to offshore companies not licensed to carry out agent activities.

Details of Bulut and Mendes’s relationship and their secret deals are contained in a new cache of files obtained by the German news magazine Der Spiegel and then shared with The Black Sea and its partners in the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network.

The files reveal that between 2010 and 2016 Bulut transferred more than €5.5 million into two bank accounts, one of them in Switzerland in the name of a Liechtenstein company and the other in the United Arab Emirates. Liechtenstein, Switzerland and UAE are considered offshore financial jurisdictions because of their high level of secrecy and low tax rates.

During the first wave of Football Leaks stories, in December 2016, The Black Sea reported that Bulut had requested €2 million in improper agency fees to be sent to an account at the Mashreq Bank in Dubai, which he opened in the name of Foot & Ball Sport International FZE – a tax-free company. Some of these deals were also done in partnership with Mendes.

But the new documents reveal that Bulut made additional payments offshore for nearly twice this amount. The superagent sent €3 million to Zurich, to an account in the name of his Liechtenstein company, Cloud International Management Establishment. He moved a further €500,000 to the Mashreq Bank account of his offshore company, Foot & Ball Sport International FZE.

While owning foreign companies or bank accounts is not illegal, Bulut’s secret businesses operate beyond the oversight of authorities in Turkey, where Bulut is officially registered as a football agent – through the Turkish Football Federation - and where he has his main Turkish agency. If Bulut did not disclose these foreign payments to the Turkish authorities, however, he could have potentially avoided between €1.2 million and €1.9 million in taxes.