A shadow agent
A graduate in international law in São Paulo, Rafaela Pimenta has been immersed in the football world for two decades. At the turn of the 2000s, she met Mino Raiola, an Italian-Dutch agent with a rising trajectory. Thus begins a fruitful collaboration. The lawyer becomes the right arm of the one who then defends the interests of the Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic and joins him in his various companies. Since the death of Mino Raiola on April 30, she has taken up the torch. Resident in Monaco, where one of the companies founded by Raiola is based, Rafaela Pimenta likes discretion as much as her mentor liked exuberance. Polyglot – she speaks eight languages – she speaks little in the press and is not active on social networks. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia does not currently devote a line to it.
The heiress of an empire
Rafaela Pimenta has had to complete two very big files in recent months. The transfer of young Norwegian serial scorer Erling Haaland to Manchester City, for 75 million euros. And that of Paul Pogba from Manchester United to Juventus Turin. The key for the French international, a four-year contract exceeding 8 million euros in annual income. Contracts that have been his daily life for years. By inheriting the management of Mino Raiola’s companies, she is now at the head of a prestigious clientele: among the international players whose career she manages, we find the Italian goalkeeper of Paris-Saint-Germain, Gianluigi Donnarumma, or the Dutch defender Matthijs de Ligt, whose recent transfer from Juve to Bayern Munich she finalized.
Paul Pogba’s “second mother”
Breaking with her relative anonymity, Rafaela Pimenta agreed to be one of the characters in the hagiographic documentary on Paul Pogba, The Pogmentary, released in June. About the one who has been defending his interests for ten years, the midfielder says: “She takes care of me like her child, so I consider her my second mom. She’s my business mom. » She : “When he won the World Cup, when he was nominated for the Ballon d’Or, when his son was born or he met his wife, I was there every time. » In a video posted on Instagram at the end of August, where he threatens his brother with “great revelations” Mathias Pogba attacks the lawyer by name. He promises Internet users that what he will say “will allow you to get an idea of her integrity and professionalism, her loyalty, and whether she deserves to take over from Mino Raiola’s stable”. Insinuations not clarified since.
A follower of the counter-attack
The lawyer managed, behind the scenes, the thorny case of the Pogba affair. Even before the release of Mathias Pogba’s video, at the end of August, the player’s clan filed a complaint with the Turin public prosecutor’s office on July 16 and denounced intimidation. Once the case was publicized, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened, on September 2, a judicial investigation for “extortion with a weapon in an organized gang”. A few days before, at the end of August, Rafaela Pimenta co-signed, with the player’s mother and French lawyers, a press release explaining that “Mathias Pogba’s recent statements on social networks are unfortunately not a surprise” and “competent authorities” had already been entered. Conveniently, the story of Paul Pogba facing the police, detailing the various pressures that he and his entourage suffered, was relayed in the press. Rafaela Pimenta, always discreet, has officially decided not to speak on the subject.