Laid bare: 3 biggest stories Football Leaks has exposed so far

Every day, whistle-blower website Football Leaks blows the lid off a transfer agreement, a big-money signing, or some kind of deal kept in the shadows. The anonymous agents behind the leaks reportedly claim they have "300 gigabytes" of information in their database, stored on a server in Russia, and they aren't afraid to publish it all.

Their first target was Doyen Sports, the third-party ownership group involved in the sales of several European footballers over the past few years. Against the wishes of intermediaries and clubs, the site proceeded to release player contracts, image rights waivers, and legal documents, prompting a formal investigation by Portuguese authorities.

Nothing is sacred: Not Gareth Bale's move to Real Madrid in 2013, not Manchester United's fee for Anthony Martial, and there's more to come. On Monday, for example, Football Leaks published the details behind James Rodriguez's transfer to Madrid, including an outrageous €500-million buyout clause in his contract.

Here are the three biggest stories Football Leaks has uncovered in recent months:

Doyen Sports exposed for transfer dealings

What Doyen represents, at the present moment, is illegal. FIFA banned third-party ownership (TPO) opportunities in 2015, and the investment group subsequently lost a court battle in Brussels to suspend the implementation of the ban.

Doyen claims it offers traditionally smaller clubs the chance to compete financially with the giants of the game, but Football Leaks has laid bare the cold hard truth of the matter.

Consider the site's first big story: Dutch club Twente received its own three-year ban because of its secret relationship with Doyen, even though it had entered an economic rights partnership agreement (ERPA) before TPO had become outlawed. According to documents, Doyen lent €5 million to the club in exchange for a percentage of the economic rights of seven different Twente players.

Related: FC Twente banned from European competition over 3rd-party ownership

On the surface, nothing looked too untoward. Twente had attempted to break the hegemony between Ajax, Feyenoord, and PSV in Dutch football, and it needed funds. But Doyen stood to make a guaranteed profit on its investments, as the ERPA included clauses that forced Twente to entertain any bids for those players. Twente was essentially obligated to compensate Doyen if it decided to reject a bid, and if the Eredivisie outfit elected to sell, the Malta-based group would receive an amount equivalent to its share of the player in question. Doyen's minimum fee for all seven players always exceeded its initial contribution.

The revelations painted Doyen as a crooked institution funded by private investors looking only for personal gain. The group later claimed that the people behind Football Leaks obtained the documents by way of a "cyberattack," and that they tried to blackmail Doyen.

The true cost of Martial's transfer fee

There's no doubt United has paid a premium price for a special player. Reports in September had already confirmed that the Red Devils made Martial the most expensive teenage signing of all-time, but it wasn't exactly clear how much they had spent.

Football Leaks provided that clarification. A document purported to be the agreement between United and AS Monaco shows the Premier League club will front up to €80 million for the French forward, including individual €10-million bonuses if he achieves certain milestones with United or France. It also includes a sell-on clause that allows Monaco to pocket 50 percent of any future sale between €60 million and €100 million.

Related - Report: Martial could cost Manchester United £61 million if clauses are met

Martial's move to Old Trafford happened relatively quickly, right before the closing of the summer transfer window, and yet the deal itself was far from straightforward. It could highlight United's desperation in the market - in which manager Louis van Gaal has spent hundreds of millions of euros since arriving in 2014 - but it also proves there's an appetite for this information. Fans want to know about how much and where their club is investing, and even people from FIFA, far from transparent in its own right, find the documents resourceful.

"Obviously the Football Leaks guys and girls have gone rogue. As an Australian, Julian Assange set the standard there with Wikileaks. For us, all streams of information are very, very useful and that one has been as well," Mark Goddard, general manager of the FIFA Transfer Matching System, told Rob Harris of the Associated Press. "We have a number of resources and places that we go to and that’s become another one."

Bale's record shrouded in politics

Bale's move from Tottenham to Madrid wasn't officially listed as the most expensive transfer in world football, and that's exactly how the executives at the Bernabeu wanted it.

BBC journalist Jonathan Northcroft said Cristiano Ronaldo "doesn't like to see that someone else cost more than him." Ronaldo arrived from United in 2009 for €94 million, and Madrid maintained it had spent no more than €91 million on Bale.

But a document posted by Football Leaks claims Madrid put up nearly €100 million for the Welsh international after electing to pay the sum in four instalments.

(Courtesy: Wales Online)

The figure itself wasn't the issue. It was the way in which Madrid shrouded the deal in secrecy. Los Blancos inserted a clause in the transfer agreement that prohibited Tottenham from issuing "any press release in which it refers to the economic aspects of the agreement," according to the document.

It also guaranteed that Bale would refrain from making "any negative or derogatory comments" about Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, and it essentially wrote off any outstanding fees for Rafael van der Vaart, who joined Tottenham from Madrid in 2010.

Bale's agent, Jonathan Barnett, called for an independent investigation into the claims, and called them "disgraceful." But there's more than just money at stake: Clubs go to great lengths to protect their brand, and every big transfer has implications not only on future transactions and relationships, but previous ones as well.