"His situation is now critical. The threats against him are not merely theoretical; he was assaulted in Lisbon last April." That's from the legal team of Rui Pinto — the Football Leaks whistleblower whose files helped bring Manchester City's financial house of cards into full view. And right now, days after City were found guilty of serious Premier League financial rule breaches, Portugal is preparing to strip him of witness protection.
The timing is as grim as it gets. City were convicted this week of manipulating commercial contracts to inflate revenue and understate costs by more than £900 million across nine seasons between 2009-10 and 2017-18. The Premier League described the arrangements as "sham" deals. The club have denied all wrongdoing and appealed. But the verdict exists. And the man whose leaked documents helped make that verdict possible is now being told his protected housing ends on October 10 — without being formally heard beforehand, his lawyers say, as required by law.
What Pinto actually did — and what it cost him
Football Leaks launched in 2015, publishing millions of confidential documents from across the football industry: transfer agreements, contracts, offshore tax arrangements involving some of the sport's wealthiest figures. Pinto was arrested in Hungary in 2019, extradited to Portugal, and eventually cooperated with authorities in exchange for protection. That deal placed him inside a witness protection programme from 2020 onwards.
Now that programme is being wound down around him while legal proceedings stemming from the leaks — including the City case — are still active. His lawyers put it plainly: "If abruptly deprived of his protected housing and plunged into a state of extreme precariousness, Rui Pinto would be more vulnerable now than at any time since 2020."
Portugal's Justice Ministry hadn't responded to requests for comment by Friday.
The bigger picture for City
Manchester City are appealing their verdict, and the sanctions — points deductions, fines, potential expulsion from the league — remain undecided. Pep Guardiola has said he's staying "behind my club." City's backers will be watching the appeals process closely, and so will anyone pricing up the Premier League title race. A points deduction that lands mid-season changes everything about how you look at the top-four picture.
But separate from the football, there's a person who took an enormous personal risk to surface information that led to one of the most consequential verdicts in English football history — and that person is now, by his own legal team's account, less safe than he's been in five years.
