Rui Pinto responds to reported Manchester City financial-rules verdict

Football Leaks founder Rui Pinto has issued a statement claiming vindication after the reported ruling against Manchester City over financial rules. The Guardian reported that Pinto sent his response to the newspaper before posting it on social media. City continues to maintain its innocence and is expected to appeal, according to the same report.

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Pinto argued that the findings supported the significance of the internal emails and financial records he had disclosed. Those materials helped prompt investigations by Uefa and the Premier League. He characterised the alleged conduct as systematic rather than isolated and predicted severe consequences for the club. Those assessments were Pinto's own: his statement did not establish what punishment would ultimately be imposed.

The response brings renewed attention to the origins of the investigations. Pinto supplied information about City's finances to German publication Der Spiegel and its partners in the European Investigative Collaborations network. According to the Guardian, the wider archive contained more than 70 million documents, providing material for reporting on clubs, players and football organisations beyond the Manchester case.

Pinto's role in those disclosures has also brought criminal proceedings against him. The Portuguese national was arrested in Budapest in 2019 during an investigation into alleged attempted extortion and cybercrimes. The Guardian reported that he later received a four-year suspended prison sentence following a lengthy trial. He spent roughly a year in pre-trial detention, from March 2019 until April 2020.

His subsequent cooperation with Portuguese investigators changed his position. In 2020, Pinto became a protected witness after agreeing to give the country's criminal investigation police access to encrypted hard drives and help with investigations. The Guardian said he remains under police protection. That arrangement followed a period in which investigators had been unable to access the encrypted material collected through Football Leaks.

The newspaper also reported that Pinto was recently acquitted in a separate trial involving 241 charges connected to his Football Leaks activities. Whether further proceedings will follow remains unclear. His statement about City therefore comes with unresolved issues on both sides: the club disputes the findings and is expected to challenge them, while Pinto's latest acquittal does not establish that all potential cases concerning his disclosures are over.