A new front has opened in the Manchester City case. Rui Pinto, the self-taught hacker who founded Football Leaks a decade ago and triggered the Premier League’s investigation into the club, has signaled through The Guardian that he is ready to work with British authorities and hand over further documents on the City file, in return for assurances over his safety.
The offer has landed in the same week an independent commission found City guilty of 114 of 115 charges covering the seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18, concluding the club had used “sham” commercial contracts to inflate revenue by more than £900m and had tried to “stop and frustrate” the investigation. City have appealed, calling the ruling flawed and citing “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact”. Sanctions are to be decided in a separate hearing.
Pinto’s leverage is not only reputational. According to the Guardian report, he still has a detailed grasp of the companies, documents and individuals at the heart of the case, and may hold material that was overlooked first time around. The 37-year-old has already cooperated sporadically with investigators in France, Germany and Belgium; Britain, if it accepts, would join that list.
‘A life-threatening situation’
The offer comes as Pinto himself loses the protection he has lived under in Portugal since August 2020. On 30 September, hours after the City verdict, the commission that runs Portugal’s witness program informed him he was being removed from it, with his police cover due to end on 10 October. He was assaulted in Lisbon in April.
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Pinto’s response, posted on social media, left no room for ambiguity.
“On 30 September 2026, just hours after the verdict officially confirming Manchester City’s guilt, the commission responsible for Portugal’s witness protection programme informed me of its decision to terminate my participation in the programme and withdraw my police protection, thereby knowingly placing me in a life-threatening situation.”
He said he had been forced into hiding.
“Given these circumstances, I have no alternative but to relocate, within the next few days, to an undisclosed location for an indefinite period of time, due to the multiple death threats I have received and the serious risk of an assassination attempt against me.”
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His legal team has accused the Portuguese state of “state terrorism” and filed an appeal against the decision.
From Football Leaks to the Etihad
Pinto, 37, is a Portuguese computer hacker from near Porto. He founded Football Leaks in 2015 under the pseudonym “John”, and between 2016 and 2018 passed more than 70 million confidential documents to a consortium of European investigative newspapers. Those files became the backbone of the Premier League’s charges against City, first laid in February 2023.
His own legal history is tangled. He received a four-year suspended sentence in Portugal in September 2023 for cybercrimes, and a six-month suspended sentence in France the same year over hacked emails belonging to Paris Saint-Germain executives. In April he was acquitted of 241 charges at a second Portuguese trial, a result his supporters have cited as vindication.
Asking the public for €3m
With state protection ending, Pinto has turned to the public. He has launched a crowdfunding campaign asking for €3m to finance life away from Portuguese police cover; it has so far raised around €27,000.
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“For this reason, I have just set up a GoFundMe campaign and I am asking for everyone’s support to help me survive this serious situation created by the Portuguese state, which, as I have already stated, has knowingly decided to place my life at risk.”
The British government has not responded publicly. Manchester City’s appeal was filed last Thursday, and a date for the sanctions hearing has yet to be set.
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