Manchester City guilty verdict ‘a historic decision’, says whistleblower Rui Pinto

Years after his leaks shook the foundations of European football, Rui Pinto is claiming vindication following Manchester City’s conviction for financial fair play breaches. The ruling has once again put the controversial whistleblower and his extraordinary archive of documents in the spotlight.

Pinto, whose leaks of private documents helped trigger investigations into Manchester City’s financial affairs, has spoken about the club’s recent conviction for breaching financial fair play rules in a statement sent to the Guardian and later posted on social media.

Related: Everything you need to know about Manchester City’s hearing and charges

Calling the conviction a “historic decision for English football”, Pinto said the ruling vindicates the vast repository of internal emails and financial records he leaked, material that helped trigger investigations by both Uefa and the Premier League.

According to Pinto, the findings demonstrate that Manchester City 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 provided journalists with unprecedented access to the inner workings of the sport, while also placing their source at the centre of a major criminal investigation.

Among the material Pinto 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 ultimately contributed to a series of investigations and revelations that reached far beyond Manchester City. The disclosures touched on subjects ranging from allegations concerning Cristiano Ronaldo and Kathryn Mayorga to the plans for the proposed European Super League.

Portuguese national Pinto 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.

Pinto 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. The encryption used by Pinto had kept the devices inaccessible.

In 2020, Pinto 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 and has lived in safehouses, with his current whereabouts 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. Pinto 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 extraordinary breadth of the material Pinto had collected.

Nothing appeared to be entirely off-limits. Among the millions of documents gathered through his activities 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. The revelations became known as Luanda Leaks and were investigated by journalists around the world, bringing renewed scrutiny to the wealth and business networks surrounding Angola’s former first family.

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 the 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.