A trial lasting more than two years ended in Portugal last month with the accused, who has uncovered some of the most outrageous wrongdoing in football, waiting until the end of April to learn if he will be sent to prison.
Rui Pinto is accused of 89 hacking offences in Portugal and attempted extortion using his information.
But it’s worth remembering that were it not for Pinto it’s safe to say Manchester City would not have been charged by the FA with financial wrongdoing, including, the Premier League said in its statement, not giving a “fair view” of its sponsorship deals, not providing full details of payment to the club’s manager or staying within the Profit and Sustainability rules in breaches that spanned more than a decade. City deny this, saying that they “look forward to this matter being put to rest once and for all”.
In his trial, Pinto was accused of using his information to blackmail Nelio Lucas, the public face of Doyen Sports, an investment fund who were involved in major football transfers, for between €500,000 (£445,000) and €1m in return for not publishing information about the organisation.
Pinto has confessed to criminality – he admitted hacking and said he regrets his actions towards Doyen – but his lawyer has argued any prison sentence should be suspended.
“I was not going to plead acquittal, it wouldn’t make sense,” his lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, said. “A suspended prison sentence would be sufficient.”
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Manchester City's alleged FFP breaches and Premier League investigation explained06 February, 2023Pinto, now aged 34 but in his late 20s when he rose to public attention with the information he revealed that has led to multiple criminal proceedings in several countries, had already spent more than a year in pre-trial detainment after being arrested in 2019 before being released after agreeing to co-operate on other cases.
“There is no doubt that he is a whistleblower,” his lawyer said. The prosecution disagreed with that description. It is one of the moral issues of our times: are those who use illegal means to expose illegality and wrongdoing whistleblowers – cast as heroes – or criminals, deserving of incarceration and scorn?
Pinto’s “Football Leaks” sparked the fire under City and allegations of financial impropriety when a cache of leaked documents were published by Der Spiegel, an investigative website in Germany. City were accused of inflating sponsorship income and paying ex-manager Roberto Mancini more via a secret contract.
Uefa opened an investigation and initially found City in breach of its Financial Fair Play regulations and handed them a two-year ban from the Champions League and a €30m fine. But City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which, in 2020, overturned the ban and reduced the fine to €10m.
But the Premier League’s own investigation, started in December 2018, rumbled on for two more years, until the bombshell statement yesterday that it had referred City to an independent commission.
Yesterday was a seismic day in English football and the fallout from the allegations will continue for several months, if not more than a year. The outcome could rewrite the last decade of English top-flight football.
Within that story, some will consider Pinto a hero. Others will consider him a villain. Whatever your view, what is certain is that without his contribution none of the financial misconduct that City have been accused of would have come to light at all.
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