In September 2015, Portuguese hacker and activist Rui Pinto launched Football Leaks to expose hidden financial practices in professional soccer, including player tax-avoidance arrangements, club finances, and third-party ownership. Pinto supplied German newspaper Der Spiegel and the European Investigative Collaborations network with roughly four terabytes of confidential emails, contracts, and internal documents between 2016 and 2019. Reporting based on the files contributed to tax prosecutions of footballers, investigations into Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain over UEFA Financial Fair Play rules, and scrutiny of plans for a European Super League. Pinto’s lawyers also said he supplied material used in the January 2020 Luanda Leaks investigation into Isabel dos Santos’s wealth, though that attribution was presented as a legal claim.
The disclosures were obtained through unauthorized access to private systems, making Pinto both a major source of public-interest revelations and a criminal defendant. Portuguese authorities arrested him in Budapest on 16 January 2019 and extradited him two months later; prosecutors initially charged him with 147 offenses and later brought a 377-count case involving Benfica emails. Prosecutors alleged he used the identity “Artem Lobuzov” to seek €1 million from football agency Doyen Sports, while Pinto denied wrongdoing and said he was verifying evidence rather than demanding payment. On 27 September 2023, a Portuguese court convicted him of attempted extortion, illegal access to data, and breach of correspondence, imposing a four-year suspended sentence. The case also prompted judicial reports examining alleged conduct by police investigators.
