Rui Pinto, the founder of Football Leaks, has claimed vindication after Manchester City’s conviction for breaching financial fair play rules, describing the ruling as a “historic decision for English football”. The whistleblower set out his reaction in a statement sent to the Guardian and later posted on social media.
Pinto’s leaks of private documents helped trigger investigations into Manchester City’s financial affairs by both Uefa and the Premier League. He said the outcome vindicates the vast repository of internal emails and financial records he disclosed. According to Pinto, the findings show the club did not simply bend financial fair play regulations but systematically undermined them through what he described as “structural manipulation and financial manoeuvring”, reducing the governing rules to a “mere formality”.
“That meticulously orchestrated fraud will finally be subject to punishment, and the impact will not merely be turbulent, but truly devastating for the Cityzens,” he said. Manchester City maintain their innocence and are expected to appeal.
Pinto, a self-taught computer enthusiast, is the central figure behind Football Leaks, the platform that exposed millions of confidential documents linked to some of the biggest clubs, players and organisations in world football. His disclosures gave journalists unprecedented access to the inner workings of the sport while placing their source at the centre of a major criminal investigation. Among the material he provided was information concerning Manchester City’s finances, which was passed to the German publication Der Spiegel and its partners in the European Investigative Collaborations network. The cache contained more than 70 million documents and contributed to a series of investigations and revelations that reached far beyond Manchester City, touching on subjects ranging from allegations concerning Cristiano Ronaldo and Kathryn Mayorga to the plans for a proposed European Super League.
The Portuguese national was arrested in Budapest in 2019 as part of an investigation into alleged attempted extortion and several cybercrimes. Following a lengthy trial, he was sentenced to four years in prison, with the sentence suspended. He spent around a year in pre-trial detention, from March 2019 to April 2020, before being released after reaching a cooperation agreement with the Portuguese authorities. For more than a year, investigators had sought access to hard drives containing information gathered through Football Leaks, held back by the encryption Pinto had used.
In 2020 he became a protected witness in Portugal in exchange for granting the Polícia Judiciária, the country’s criminal investigation police, access to the hard drives and assisting with a number of investigations. He remains under police protection, has lived in safehouses, and his current whereabouts are kept confidential.
In Portugal, Pinto has become a deeply divisive figure. To some he is a whistleblower who exposed wrongdoing in an industry long criticised for its lack of transparency; to others, his methods crossed legal and ethical boundaries. He has openly acknowledged his support for Porto, but that allegiance did not prevent him from leaking documents concerning the club and the dealings of its former president, Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa. Other major Portuguese clubs, including Benfica and Sporting, also appeared in material obtained through his activities.
The scope of the leaks extended beyond football clubs. Judges, lawyers and politicians were among those whose information was exposed, demonstrating the breadth of the material Pinto had collected. Among the millions of documents were files that shed light on the business interests and financial dealings surrounding Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos. Those revelations became known as Luanda Leaks and were investigated by journalists around the world.
Pinto was recently acquitted in a second trial in which he faced 241 charges relating to his activities as the source behind Football Leaks. While that acquittal removes one major legal threat, it remains unclear whether he will face further criminal proceedings connected to the millions of documents obtained and disclosed through the project. The possibility of additional cases means that, despite his cooperation with Portuguese authorities and his status as a protected witness, Pinto’s legal troubles may not yet be over.