Rui Pinto: the hacker who shook Manchester City from Budapest

Who is Rui Pinto, the 37‑year‑old whistleblower operating from his small apartment in Budapest, whose leaks led the Premier League to condemn Manchester City for 114 violations? His portrait appears on Google, where he is described as the man who shook the world of football.

The trial and his appearance

During his first appearance, Rui Pinto arrived with spiky hair, brown sneakers with untied laces and a worn t‑shirt under a leather jacket. Under the t‑shirt, he wore a bullet‑proof vest, fearing for his safety, while snipers were positioned on the roof of the courthouse.

The beginnings of Football Leaks

Rui Pinto, a history graduate with no computer training, nevertheless managed to hack millions of confidential documents from the highest echelons of European football. In 2015, he founded Football Leaks to “reveal football’s hidden side”, initially targeting scandals around Benfica and his beloved club, FC Porto.

Major revelations

He got in touch with journalist Rafael Buschmann of the German magazine Der Spiegel, to whom he transmitted three terabytes of information. An entire team of journalists then sifted through the data, uncovering astonishing contractual clauses.

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Among the revelations, Rafael van der Vaart’s contract with Betis prohibited him from wearing red shoes, the colour of rival Sevilla FC. At PSG, Neymar received an ethics bonus of €375,000 per month, conditioned on greeting the supporters, being punctual at training and not criticizing his coach’s tactical choices.

Football Leaks also published information on tax schemes involving Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and José Mourinho, as well as a rape allegation against Ronaldo, ultimately dismissed by an American judge.

The two most affected clubs, PSG and Manchester City, are alleged to have circumvented financial fair‑play through artificially inflated sponsorship contracts. The Premier League, after several years of investigation, declared Manchester City guilty of 114 of the 115 violations identified. Rui Pinto tweeted on X that this decision was “historic for English football, rewarding the work carried out with Football Leaks.”

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On the judicial front, he was arrested in Hungary in January 2019 and lived under protected‑witness status. In September 2023, a Portuguese court found him guilty of nine of the 90 charges, sentencing him to four years’ imprisonment suspended. In France, he received a six‑month suspended prison sentence for hacking the French Football Federation. Earlier this year, a second trial in Portugal completely acquitted him of 241 charges.