Long before Manchester City was charged by the Premier League with 115 alleged breaches of its financial rules, Portuguese computer enthusiast Rui Pinto had quietly assembled an extraordinary archive of confidential documents that would eventually place some of European football’s biggest clubs, players, agents and administrators under intense scrutiny.
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Pinto, a self-taught computer enthusiast and former history student, became the central figure behind Football Leaks, a platform launched in 2015 that published confidential documents concerning the financial and commercial dealings of the football industry.
Operating under the pseudonym “John”, Pinto obtained access to private digital systems and accumulated millions of documents, much of which was subsequently shared with investigative journalists across Europe.
Between 2015 and 2018, his disclosures exposed information involving football clubs, agents, players, third-party ownership arrangements and discussions surrounding the proposed European Super League.
Among the most consequential material were documents concerning Manchester City.
In 2018, German publication Der Spiegel, drawing on documents obtained through Football Leaks, published allegations concerning Manchester City’s sponsorship arrangements and whether some payments had been structured in ways that circumvented UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules.
The disclosures became part of the background to investigations that would eventually involve both UEFA and the Premier League.
In February 2023, the Premier League charged Manchester City with 115 alleged breaches of its financial regulations covering several seasons between 2009 and 2018. The allegations included issues relating to financial information supplied by the club and its alleged failure to cooperate with the league’s investigation.
The charges themselves did not amount to findings of wrongdoing.
Manchester City has consistently denied the allegations and maintained that it possesses a comprehensive body of evidence supporting its position.
The Football Leaks revelations had previously led to a separate UEFA investigation.
In 2020, UEFA imposed a two-year ban from European club competitions on Manchester City and fined the club €30 million after finding breaches of its Financial Fair Play regulations.
Manchester City challenged the decision before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
CAS subsequently overturned the ban from European competitions and reduced the fine from €30 million to €10 million. The tribunal found that some of the alleged breaches had either not been established or were time-barred, although it upheld a finding that Manchester City had failed to cooperate with UEFA’s investigation.
The Premier League proceedings are separate from the UEFA case and involve a broader set of allegations.
Pinto’s activities, however, extended far beyond Manchester City.
Football Leaks disclosed confidential information relating to prominent footballers, including Lionel Messi and Neymar, as well as agents, clubs and football administrators. The documents also shed light on third-party ownership arrangements and discussions surrounding plans for a European Super League.
Much of the material was shared with the European Investigative Collaborations network, enabling journalists in different countries to examine and publish stories from the enormous archive.
Reports have differed on the precise size of the collection. The Guardian has described it as containing more than 70 million documents, while the BBC has reported that Pinto shared about 18.6 million documents between 2015 and 2018.
The information attributed to Pinto was not limited to football.
Documents connected to him were also used in the Luanda Leaks investigation, which examined financial dealings involving Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos.
Pinto’s activities eventually led to criminal proceedings against him.
He was arrested in Budapest, Hungary, in January 2019 and later extradited to Portugal.
He spent about a year in pre-trial detention before his release and subsequently entered Portugal’s witness-protection programme.
In September 2023, a Portuguese court handed Pinto a four-year suspended prison sentence after convicting him of offences including attempted extortion, unlawful access to computer systems and violations of correspondence.
He was convicted on five counts relating to unlawful computer access and three counts involving violations of correspondence.
The proceedings also concerned allegations that Pinto attempted to obtain between €500,000 and €1 million from Doyen Sports in exchange for not publishing material regarded as potentially damaging to the company.
Pinto has maintained that he acted as a whistleblower exposing wrongdoing in the public interest.
The Portuguese court, however, drew a distinction between the public interest in disclosing information and the methods by which the information was obtained, holding that the freedom to inform did not justify unlawful interference with private communications and computer systems.
His legal position later took an unusual turn when he agreed to cooperate with Portuguese investigators.
Pinto provided investigators with access to encrypted hard drives containing material gathered through Football Leaks and subsequently became a protected witness, reportedly living under police protection.
His legal difficulties nevertheless continued.
According to reports in September 2026, Pinto was acquitted in another trial involving 241 charges linked to his activities as the source behind Football Leaks.
His story has therefore placed him in the unusual position of being both a convicted computer hacker and a source whose documents have assisted journalists and investigators examining alleged wrongdoing across international football and beyond.
Pinto remains a controversial figure.
Supporters regard him as a whistleblower whose disclosures forced football authorities, clubs and other powerful interests to face scrutiny that might otherwise never have occurred.
Critics point to the unauthorised manner in which confidential material was obtained and the serious privacy and cybersecurity implications of accessing and disseminating information from private systems.
What is difficult to dispute is the scale of the consequences flowing from Football Leaks.
Material attributed to Pinto helped provide journalists with documents concerning Manchester City that contributed to wider scrutiny of the club’s financial arrangements and preceded investigations by both UEFA and the Premier League.
The Manchester City case also demonstrates the complicated legal journey information can take after being obtained through unauthorised access. Documents acquired by a hacker moved from encrypted drives to investigative journalists, from published reports to football regulators, and ultimately became part of one of the most closely watched financial disputes in modern English football.
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