Football Leaks founder loses police protection after Man City guilty verdict

Rui Pinto, the founder of Football Leaks whose leaked documents sparked the investigation into Manchester City, has lost his police protection in Portugal in the wake of the Premier League’s landmark ruling against the club.

An independent commission found City guilty of 114 of the 115 financial charges brought against them following a lengthy inquiry. The club maintains its innocence and is expected to lodge an appeal in the coming days. No sanction has yet been announced, though relegation, a points deduction, and a substantial fine have all been discussed as possibilities.

According to The Guardian, Portuguese authorities have withdrawn the witness protection they had provided to Pinto since 2020. He has also been advised to “exercise caution with family contacts” and to stay off social media — guidance he has already disregarded in responding publicly to the City verdict.

Pinto, 37, reacted to the commission’s findings with a series of pointed statements. “A historic decision for English football, and one that comes to crown the work I carried out through Football Leaks,” he wrote. “Today, we all know that, through structural manipulation and financial manoeuvring, Manchester City did not merely circumvent the rules, they turned them into a mere formality, challenging any attempt to preserve the integrity of the competition.”

He added that the “meticulously orchestrated fraud will finally be subject to punishment” and invoked Pep Guardiola’s words at his first City press conference — “Fasten your seat belts” — as an ironic footnote to the verdict.

Following the Premier League’s official statement, Pinto went further: “The Independent Commission is particularly harsh in the way it characterises the actions taken by Manchester City executives, who acted with complete impunity, challenging everyone and everything. From the very beginning, they demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the rules, for the bodies responsible for overseeing and regulating the game, for the integrity of the competition, for the other clubs and, above all, for the fans.”

Pinto himself is not without legal history. In September 2023 he received a suspended four-year sentence in Portugal after being found guilty of attempted extortion, illegal access to data, and breach of correspondence — charges that arose from his methods in obtaining and distributing the Football Leaks material. His loss of protection adds a fresh layer of personal jeopardy to a figure who has long occupied an uncomfortable position at the centre of European football’s biggest financial scandal.