Manchester City whistleblower Rui Pinto to remain under police protection

What the report says

Portuguese hacker and Football Leaks source Rui Pinto will remain under police protection after authorities in Portugal extended measures that were due to end on October 10, according to Al Jazeera. The Ministry of Justice said a prior decision was set aside because Pinto had not been properly informed of the reasons and had not been given a chance to challenge it.

Pinto is best known for obtaining private documents that helped fuel scrutiny of Manchester City’s finances and broader investigations into football misconduct. The material he passed to journalists contributed to the Premier League’s probe into City’s accounts for the period from 2009 to 2018. An independent commission later found City guilty on nearly all of the 115 charges linked to alleged financial rule breaches, though the club has continued to contest the case.

The article says Pinto’s lawyers recently complained about irregularities in the process and pointed to what they described as serious threats against him. Pinto himself has said he moved to a secret location after receiving multiple death threats, and he was assaulted in Lisbon last April. He has been under witness protection since 2020, after agreeing to give Portuguese authorities access to encrypted files gathered before his arrest.

More broadly, Pinto’s disclosures have been linked to investigations across several European countries and to tax and judicial inquiries involving football figures and clubs. Al Jazeera also noted that Pinto was separately given a suspended four-year sentence in 2023 in Portugal after being convicted on several charges related to hacking and data access.