Football leaks: whistleblower Rui Pinto sentenced to six months suspended prison sentence

Rui Pinto, the man behind the “Football leaks”, was sentenced Wednesday at the Paris court to a six-month suspended prison sentence for hacking PSG leaders.

The affair caused an earthquake in the world of football. Rui Pinto, This 35-year-old Portuguese is the source of this gigantic leak of information which profoundly shook the football world in December 2016. He accepted, Wednesday November 21, the six-month suspended prison sentence proposed by the public prosecutor, approved by a judge of the criminal court during an appearance hearing on prior recognition of guilt (CRPC), a sort of French-style guilty plea. He was also ordered to pay one euro in damages to PSG, which became a civil party, as well as 4,000 euros in legal costs.

“I accept the facts that you accuse me of. I don’t see why we should prolong a judgment any longer. I have already been in the middle of a judicial bureaucracy for five years in Portugal for facts that may be similar to those for which I am present now”, the whistleblower said. Between 2015 and 2019, he notably fraudulently accessed the email boxes of the financial director of PSG, the deputy general director and a general management assistant in order to extract data. The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a preliminary investigation in December 2016 to “laundering of aggravated tax fraud”. The perpetrator reiterated his “willingness to cooperate with all European judicial authorities to continue doing my job“, and in particular with the PNF.

Revelations concerning PSG, but also Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Pogba…

By transmitting millions of documents constituting the “Football leaks”, he revealed cases of tax fraud, sexual assault, discrimination and corruption. Major players in the football world had been implicated in several countries, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe, Paul Pogba as well as PSG.

Rui Pinto is also at the origin of the “Luanda leaks”, an investigation, published in January 2020, accusing the businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, of having accumulated an immense fortune fraudulently during his father’s reign.