Meet Rui Pinto, the hacker whose leaks shook world football

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Mention Rui Pinto to many Manchester City fans and they may not recognise the name.

But the Portuguese computer hacker has played a central role in one of football’s biggest financial controversies through Football Leaks, the website he created to publish confidential documents from clubs, players and agents.

The Premier League’s financial charges against Manchester City, which the club has denied and is expected to appeal, are also linked to documents published by Pinto through Football Leaks, PUNCH Online reports.

According to BBC on Saturday, the leaked material included internal emails about sponsorship deals and payments involving Manchester City and eventually became part of the background to the Premier League’s financial case against the club.

But Pinto’s story goes beyond Manchester City.

The 37-year-old has spent years at the centre of a debate over whether he should be regarded as a criminal hacker or a whistleblower who exposed what he described as “the hidden side of football”.

His journey began in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro River from Porto, where he grew up.

His former geography teacher, Mario Falcao, remembers him as an ordinary pupil with a particular ability with computers.

“Rui was a perfectly normal pupil. He was nice, with his spiky hair, he was quite sociable but not extrovert,” Falcao said.

“He had a good relationship with the teachers, although he did miss these classes quite often. His father was always on top of things, so in the end he passed quite easily.”

Falcao said Pinto was particularly good with computers.

“Certainly he was very good in computers. All the work that he did for various courses were very good, when he put his mind to it,” he said.

As a young man, Pinto lived a relatively ordinary life, according to his former teacher.

Falcao recalled that he would “go to the gym, go to McDonald’s”.

Pinto grew up in a modest family. His father, Francisco, worked in a shoe factory before becoming an antiques dealer, while his mother died when he was 11.

Falcao said he never imagined his former pupil would become internationally known through Football Leaks.

“We were very surprised,” he said of the moment Pinto was named as the founder of Football Leaks in 2019.

“We weren’t imagining anything like this could happen, that he could have problems with justice.

“I certainly wouldn’t wish him and his family to be in this situation. Perhaps it was a question of the excesses of youth, his ability with computers, and maybe an excess of club-ism.”

“So, you know, the fact that he supported FC Porto prompted him to commit some acts, but maybe he also felt the need for justice that young people very often do feel.”

How Football Leaks began

Pinto established Football Leaks in 2015 with the stated aim of exposing “the hidden side of football”.

Portuguese journalist Antonio Varela was the first journalist contacted by Pinto, who used the pseudonym “John” because his real identity was not initially known.

“It was a common day of September 2015. I was at the news room at [Portuguese sports newspaper] Record and I got an email from Football Leaks. It was strange. Then I immediately go to the site, and I can’t believe there is lots of information that you never heard or read. We made the conclusion this is very, very important.”

The material raised questions for journalists over whether information obtained illegally could still be published when it was considered to be in the public interest.

“We realised that [Football Leaks] got the information illegally. But since the moment they publish the information on the site, that’s public information,” Varela said.

“You can’t ignore that. Ethically, it’s complicated, but the public interest is more relevant than the ethical issue. That was the conclusion.”

Football Leaks initially focused on Portuguese clubs, including Benfica and Pinto’s supported club, FC Porto.

It later expanded to documents and communications involving some of football’s biggest names, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar.

Millions of documents

Pinto eventually established contact with Rafael Buschmann, a journalist at the German magazine Der Spiegel.

After deciding he could trust Buschmann, Pinto shared tens of millions of documents with him.

A team of journalists at Der Spiegel in Hamburg then worked through the material, producing a series of reports that drew international attention.

Christoph Winterbach, a data journalist who worked on the project, recalled the experience of seeing the documents for the first time.

“In the beginning it was very much a fascinating feeling of like a child in a candy store,” he said.

“If you’re a football fan, if you’re a sports journalist, it was amazing to see the actual documents, to see those emails where things are negotiated and to get a real look behind the curtain, how things work.”

But Winterbach said the journalists had to establish the authenticity and relevance of the material before publication.

“It’s very important when you have this type of documents, this type of data, that you make a lot of cross checks, that you use some software which we did that can put it all into context and you can see if there’s any reliability issues.

“We always need to make sure that it’s authentic material and whenever we publish something about it, it needs to be in the public interest to start writing.”

Pinto ultimately provided more than three terabytes of information to Der Spiegel and other outlets in the European Investigative Collaborations consortium.

Winterbach met Pinto in person in 2019 while he was being held in prison in Lisbon awaiting trial.

He later interviewed him again in witness protection at a secret location.

Describing Pinto, Winterbach said: “Rui Pinto is not very tall. He has very distinctive hair, like spiky hair. He usually has red cheeks and he’s a youthful, cheeky, funny character. He’s friendly and warm when you meet him.

“He’s a very impressive character, he’s very focused, he’s very concentrated. He’s very, very intelligent. He’s very idealistic about the topics that he uncovered.

“He’s one of the most important whistleblowers that we have in Europe or maybe the world.”

Hacker or whistleblower?

Pinto’s actions have produced sharply different views.

Former Portuguese politician and diplomat Ana Gomes has testified on his behalf and argued that he should be protected as a whistleblower.

“What he has exposed is very important. In Portugal, definitely he is by far the most important whistleblower,” Gomes said.

“He should be made an ally of our judicial and criminal investigative authorities. He has helped the authorities of other European countries in going after the corrupt and the criminals, instead of being the subject of this judicial prosecution by the choice of our public prosecutors.”

Asked about Manchester City, whose emails were hacked by Pinto, Gomes said:

“I couldn’t care less. If they have nothing to hide, what’s their problem?”

But that view is not shared by everyone.

Retired journalist Jose Carlos Freitas said: “For the majority of the people, they look at him as a thief. For some people, he is a kind of hero, a Robin Hood, you can say because he was exposing the dark side of the business of so many clubs, but unfortunately for the majority of the people, he is not a good person.”

Varela offered a more mixed assessment.

“Nowadays, I think I put him in the middle [between whistleblower and criminal hacker] because he got the information illegally. But he gave us, all of us, a view, a dark view of European football, so he did a job to the society illegally.”

Arrest, convictions and witness protection

Pinto’s activities have also had serious consequences for him.

He was arrested in Hungary in 2019 and extradited to Portugal. Over the following years, he was held in solitary confinement, placed under house arrest and later entered witness protection.

Following his first trial in Portugal, Pinto received a four-year suspended sentence in 2023 after being found guilty of attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence.

A separate trial in France resulted in a six-month suspended prison sentence.

At a later trial in Lisbon, his security arrangements reflected the attention surrounding his case.

He arrived with members of his witness protection team, while armed police were present in court.

Rui Patricio, the lawyer representing Benfica, described Pinto in court as “no more, no less than a burglar” and said he had obtained information through “illegal and condemnable methods”.

Outside court, Patricio said: “Our argument is very, very simple. He’s a hacker, period, just like that. What he did is not allowed – it’s a crime and there are no excuses. It’s very, very simple. Very, very straightforward.”

Pinto’s lawyer, Francisco Texeira da Mota, accepted that his client was “not a hero and not a saint” but argued that he had brought “advantages for society”.

The Manchester City connection

Football Leaks eventually became linked to the Premier League’s case against Manchester City.

Pinto has monitored the case from witness protection since the Premier League brought its charges in February 2023.

Asked whether the outcome mattered to Pinto, Texeira da Mota said:

“I think it’s important for him because it’s very difficult to be like he is, living a very difficult life, more or less hiding, because he made some revelations, he whistle-blowed lots of important things, namely about [Manchester City].

“So it would be important for him to feel vindicated that it was useful, that something happened, because what of what he said.”

Former Manchester City financial adviser Stefan Borson said the consequences of the Premier League case could be significant for the club if its core allegations were proven.

“I think for City, really, the whole of the Sheikh Mansour era is at stake if the core allegations are proven against the club.

“I think the consequences could be very far reaching for the club, and it would be a very difficult thing for them to deal with.

“Over time, clearly there would have to be some kind of reset. I think in many ways the Premier League is a loser either way.”

But Borson rejected the idea that Pinto should be viewed as a freedom fighter.

“We know that what he carried out was a criminal act and he’s been prosecuted for it.

“We also know that hackers of that nature do try and reframe themselves as part of the defence process as purveyors of freedom of speech. But, once those documents are in the public domain, then I think it’s for the authorities to act.”

The debate over Pinto therefore remains divided between those who focus on how he obtained the information and those who focus on what the information revealed.

But the impact of Football Leaks has extended well beyond Portugal.

From a computer in Budapest, Pinto became a central figure in a story that brought confidential football documents into the public domain and helped shape some of the biggest financial controversies in the modern game.

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