Rui Pinto, the Portuguese hacker whose leaked documents helped trigger the Premier League’s financial investigation into Manchester City, will continue to receive police protection. This was revealed after Portuguese authorities intervened to keep his witness protection measures in place, officials confirmed on Friday.
The 37-year-old’s security arrangements had been due to expire on Saturday, 10 October, but Portugal’s Ministry of Justice announced that protection would remain active “pending a new decision.” The decision extends a saga that has run alongside City’s long-running battle with the Premier League over its finances.
Pinto, through the Football Leaks website he founded, obtained a trove of private club documents that showed Manchester City had broken league regulations between 2009 and 2018.
An independent commission later found the club guilty on all but one of 115 charges brought against it for breaching the Premier League’s financial rules. The verdict has continued to cast a shadow over the Etihad Stadium even as Enzo Maresca settles into his first full season as head coach following Pep Guardiola’s departure.
Legal wrangling over protection order
According to Aljazeera, the original decision to end Pinto’s protection was overturned after it emerged the process had been mishandled. The Ministry of Justice said a previous resolution was nullified because Pinto had not been “duly informed of the reasons for the decision”.
The report claimed that he had not had the opportunity to challenge it, a flaw that forced authorities to reconsider the matter rather than let his cover lapse as planned.
The setback came after Pinto’s legal team raised concerns about how the case had been handled. His lawyers last week denounced irregularities in the proceedings, highlighting the real threats facing their client, who was assaulted in Lisbon last April.
Pinto has previously said he was forced to move to a secret location, telling reporters it was “due to the multiple death threats” he had received since his identity and work became public.
Pinto has held protected-witness status since 2020, when he agreed to give Portuguese authorities access to millions of files he had gathered before his arrest.
He was detained in Hungary in January 2019 and extradited to Portugal, where he spent more than a year in pre-trial detention before agreeing to cooperate by handing over the encrypted data in his possession.
He has occupied the unusual position of being both a defendant and a protected witness within the Portuguese justice system, while also assisting investigators in other European countries.
The former history student and self-taught computer expert admitted during his first trial to hacking into computer systems to obtain millions of documents, which he began publishing from late 2015.
That material, passed to a consortium of European investigative outlets, exposed questionable practices involving players, clubs and agents, and went on to trigger tax adjustments and judicial inquiries in several countries.
A Portuguese court handed Pinto a suspended four-year sentence in September 2023 after finding him guilty of attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence.
Man City remain focus on the season under new management
For Manchester City, the renewed attention on Pinto arrives at a sensitive moment. The club is already appealing the Premier League’s ruling on its financial breaches, even as it looks to move forward on the pitch under Maresca.
The Italian now finds himself managing a squad still shadowed by the fallout from the very documents Pinto helped bring to light.
