After superstars, agent Mendes faces the heat
decades ago, he was a budding entrepreneur making a living from managing a video club and discotheques.
Today, at the age of 51, Jorge Mendes operates in a hyper-moneyed world inhabited by top sportsmen as agent to the stars — including Cristiano Ronaldo.
But all is no longer well among the gilded megastars advised by the man who has been elected “best agent of the year” several times at the Globe Soccer Awards.
Mendes appeared in court near Madrid on Tuesday for questioning over striker Radamel Falcao’s alleged tax evasion, just one of his clients to fall foul of Spain’s judiciary.
Monaco’s Falcao is suspected of failing to correctly declare €5.6 million of income earned from image rights between 2012 and 2013 while at Atletico Madrid.
The Colombian is accused of using a web of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Ireland, Colombia and Panama to avoid taxes.
Ronaldo, the world’s highest paid athlete according to Forbes, is due to be questioned on July 31 after allegedly evading €14.7 million in taxes. Fabio Coentrao, the Portugal international who also plays for Real Madrid, is suspected of having hidden close to €1.3 million.
And Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho, another Mendes client, has been accused of failing to pay millions in taxes during his time in charge of Real Madrid. Nicknamed “the shark” by rival agents, the diminutive Mendes has a penchant for being discreet — he keeps his head down and rarely gives interviews.
When he does surface he is generally seen phone in hand or clamped to his ear wheeling and dealing for his stable of some 100 players or coaches whose interests he manages.
Yet Mendes has been front page news since an international consortium of media organisations highlighted a huge data leak purporting to show that Ronaldo, Mourinho and others kept millions of earnings out of the taxman’s reach in havens.
Mendes, whose company, Gestifute International, is registered in Ireland, has vigorously denied any wrongdoing.
He was one of the first to exploit player rights through third parties such as investment funds — a practice FIFA has now made illegal.
Mendes appears to be an archetypal ‘self-made man.’ Born to an oil industry worker in Lisbon he left the Portuguese capital aged 19 to enter the business world in the northern provincial town of Viana do Castelo.
A video club which he opened became a successful venture and soon he would meet Portugal keeper Nuno Espirito Santo in a disco he was also running.
A former semi-professional footballer himself, Mendes set about cultivating close links to players, creating his own network and starting to look after their interests.
“He works hard with players and looks after them constantly,” Real Madrid president Florentino Perez once said of Mendes in allusion to his dealing with Ronaldo’s €94 million move.