Portuguese hacker and activist Rui Pinto, who helped set the Premier League’s investigation into Manchester City in motion, will keep his place in Portugal’s witness protection programme after the plan to strip his status was suspended.
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One of the most important figures in Manchester City’s years-long battle with the Premier League is the man who, arguably, started it all.
That man is Rui Pinto, founder of the Football Leaks website, whose hacking activity uncovered much of the documentation that has been used as evidence of the club’s alleged wrongdoing for most of the past decade.
Amidst reports of fears for his safety, it was announced that Pinto would lose the protected witness status granted to him by the Portuguese government. That will no longer happen - at least for now.
The man behind the leaks that set in motion the high-profile case against Manchester City is reportedly ready to co-operate with the British government - and hand over further relevant documents - provided his safety can be guaranteed.cityxtra.co.ukThe man behind the leaks that set in motion the high-profile case against Manchester City is reportedly ready to co-operate with the British government - and hand over further relevant documents - provided his safety can be guaranteed.
Man City Whistleblower Rui Pinto Willing to Exchange Further Evidence for UK Protection
A reprieve for now
It was previously reported that Pinto, 37, would be cut loose from Saturday 10 October, a decision he described as leaving him in a “life-threatening situation”.
However, as reported by BBC Sport, Portugal’s Ministry of Justice announced on Friday that Pinto’s removal had been put on hold for now. The body behind the move, the special security programmes commission, was judged to have failed to properly inform Pinto of the grounds for ending his protection and give him a chance to contest it.
He now has 10 days to review a risk assessment, drawn up by that same commission, which reportedly judges the risk to his safety to be low.
In a post on X, Pinto thanked the country’s Minister of Justice Rita Alarcão Júdice. Pinto claimed that the commission’s original ruling had been unlawful and described it as a “manifest abuse of power”.
The link to City’s case
Pinto is not solely a figure from the world of football, but his name carries undeniable weight among Manchester City supporters - and that has been put back in the spotlight thanks to recent developments.
In 2018, he passed a large number of confidential files, including internal emails and financial documents from the club, to German publication Der Spiegel. Those documents formed the basis of not only the media reporting into the club’s finances but also official investigations into City’s alleged financial fair play breaches.
The biggest of those investigations came to a head last month, when an independent commission found City guilty of serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules across nine seasons, spanning 2009 to 2018. The club deny any wrongdoing and are appealing the ruling.
Pinto entered his country’s witness protection programme in 2020, having agreed to work with the authorities and share material amassed through his Football Leaks operation.
What next for Pinto?
Pinto has always called himself a whistleblower. His record extends well beyond Football Leaks; he has been heavily involved in controversial cases from the worlds of banking and politics as well as sport.
A Portuguese court convicted him of a multitude of crimes - including illegally accessing data and attempted extortion - in 2023, handing down a suspended four-year sentence. He appeared in a bulletproof vest at a trial in 2020, in a hearing that deployed heightened security.
This year Pinto was acquitted on 241 charges of illegally accessing the email accounts of several Portuguese sporting organisations, one of which was Benfica.
His immediate future rests on the 10-day window he has been given and the review that must now take place. City, meanwhile, are focused on their appeal, a process expected to run well into the future.
There has been recent suggestion that Pinto could cooperate with the UK government in exchange for further documents about the Manchester City case; whether that pathway is still open following the suspension of his removal from the witness protection program remains to be seen.