Rui Pinto, the man behind Football Leaks who helped spark the Premier League's investigation into Manchester City's finances, will continue to receive police protection. The Portuguese Ministry of Justice announced the move as his lawyers raised concerns about procedural irregularities and the real threats their client faces.
In a statement on Friday, the Portuguese Ministry of Justice said the witness protection measures for Pinto — which had been due to expire on Saturday, October 10 — will remain in force until a new decision is made. The ministry said an earlier resolution had been annulled because Pinto was not "fully informed of the reasons for the decision" and had no chance to object.
Pinto's lawyers had earlier denounced irregularities in the proceedings and highlighted the real threats against their client, who was assaulted in Lisbon last April. The 37-year-old said he had to move to a secret location "after receiving multiple death threats."
Pinto has been a protected witness since 2020, after agreeing to give Portuguese authorities access to millions of files he collected before his arrest. He was arrested in Hungary — where he was living — in January 2019, then extradited to his native Portugal and held for more than a year before cooperating with investigators by granting access to the encrypted trove in his possession.
In Portugal's justice system, Pinto is both a defendant and a protected witness. He is also cooperating with investigators from other European countries.
The documents Pinto collected showed Manchester City breached league rules between 2009 and 2018. An independent commission later found the club guilty of nearly all of the 115 charges related to Premier League financial rule breaches.
At his first trial, the former history student and self-taught computer expert admitted hacking computers to obtain millions of documents, which he began publishing online in late 2015. That vast trove, passed to a consortium of European investigative news outlets, exposed questionable practices involving football stars, clubs and agents, leading to tax adjustments and judicial investigations in several countries.
In September 2023, a Portuguese court handed Pinto a four-year suspended sentence after convicting him of charges including attempted extortion, unauthorised access to data and breach of correspondence.
