Rui Pinto: Hacker behind Manchester City football leaks scandal
By Dan Kauna, September 26, 2026Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 of the 115 financial charges brought against them by the Premier League, and the man whose leaked documents started it all is finally speaking.
Rui Pinto, the Portuguese whistleblower behind Football Leaks, called the verdict “a historic decision for English football, and one that comes to crown the work I carried out through Football Leaks.”
The charges cover breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018, the same years City rose from a mid-table club to a dominant force in English football following their 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s royal family.
Pinto said the ruling proves City did not simply bend the rules.
According to him, the club engaged in “structural manipulation and financial manoeuvring” that reduced financial fair play regulations to “a mere formality.”
He added that punishment for what he called “meticulously orchestrated fraud” would hit City’s supporters hard.
How the leaks brought City to court
Pinto founded Football Leaks in 2015 to publish confidential football documents, starting with material on Portuguese clubs Benfica and FC Porto.
The trove later grew to include internal City emails and financial records, which he passed to German magazine Der Spiegel and a network of European newsrooms known as European Investigative Collaborations.
Those documents, first published in 2018, exposed how City allegedly disguised the true source of sponsorship income to stay within financial fair play limits.
The revelations pushed UEFA to hand City a two-year European ban in February 2020, later overturned on appeal, and prompted the Premier League to file its own case in February 2023.
City have always denied wrongdoing and say the evidence was stolen and taken out of context. Reacting to the verdict, the club said their position “remains consistent with the club’s statement of February 2023” and confirmed plans to appeal.
Pinto’s own price for the leaks
Pinto has paid heavily for his role. He was arrested in Budapest on January 16, 2019, extradited to Portugal two months later, and spent a year in pre-trial detention before house arrest and eventual release in August 2020.
In September 2023, a Portuguese court gave him a four-year suspended sentence for attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence.
He has lived under police protection in undisclosed safehouses since 2020, waiting to see whether the Manchester City case would prove his leaks mattered.
Recalling Pep Guardiola’s first words as City manager, Pinto said, “Ironically, I cannot help but remember Pep Guardiola’s words at his first press conference as City manager: ‘Fasten your seat belts.'”
City now awaits sanctions that could range from a fine to a points deduction.