The National Basketball Association has banned tech billionaire Steve Ballmer for one year after an investigation found his team secretly funnelled millions of dollars to a star player through sham endorsements that violated league salary limits. The Los Angeles Clippers were also fined $30mn and lost five first-round draft picks from 2029 to 2033.

“I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. Last September, the independent journalist Pablo Torre reported that a California fintech start-up, Aspiration Partners, had been used by the Clippers to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard, who joined the Clippers as a free agent in 2019.

The league commissioned law firm Wachtell, Lipton to investigate charges of Clippers salary cap misconduct, a probe that included interviews with 60 people including Ballmer, Leonard and several Clippers executives. The law firm released a 36-page summary report of its findings on Wednesday. The Torre report detailed an arrangement for Aspiration to provide Leonard with a contract, with the Clippers then agreeing to do business with the company.

“We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a pre-determined narrative rather than facts and evidence,” the Clippers said in a statement. The team said it would challenge the findings through arbitration. Leonard, who recently signed with the Toronto Raptors, was fined $700,000, and his uncle Dennis Robertson was banned from dealing with NBA teams for five years.