Soccer is something that brings joy to fans all around the world but it’s not all fun and games as we only see the tip of the iceberg. Soccer also has a dark side which was exposed by a Portuguese computer hacker named Rui Pinto back in 2018.
Pinto is an activist, whistleblower, and creator of the Football Leaks website back in 2015. Football Leaks had a total of 70 million documents amounting to 3.4 terabytes of data.
From the time of the website’s inception in 2015 till his arrest in January 2019, Pinto exposed a large chunk of the soccer world by uploading hundreds of internal documents. He even collaborated with German newsmagazine Der Spiegel to release even more documents.
Pinto published details from Neymar and Gareth Bale’s contracts and also had allegations made against Manchester City and PSG relating to financial fair play. Pinto was found guilty of unauthorized entry into computer systems, attempted extortion and even intercepting correspondence for accessing emails.
Recently the court decided that Pinto would receive a suspended prison sentence where he will serve the four-year sentence but not in prison after his lawyers were able to appeal to the court that he was just acting as a “whistleblower”.
🚨🚨 The Portuguese computer hacker whose release of a huge cache of documents led directly to Manchester City being charged with 115 rule breaches by the Premier League has received a suspended prison sentence by a court in Lisbon.
In 2018, Rui Pinto, a 34-year-old Portuguese… pic.twitter.com/QxkzImQ72R
— Football Talk (@FootballTalkHQ) September 12, 2023
Pinto’s life doesn’t get any easier from here as he is facing charges for 377 crimes. It has been reported that he illegally accessed Benfica’s mail and shared it with FC Porto’s director of communication.
All the FFP breaches done by Manchester City
The treble winners Manchester City have been accused of breaching FFP or Financial Fair Play on various occasions. From the documents published by Rui Pinto it was seen that City has lied about their sponsorship money by inflating them to evade the rules, Also there were proofs of the club running an off-the-books player recruitment fund.
There was also the infamous text leaked “one down, six to go” by Simon Cliff, a City Lawyer after one of UEFA’s 7 investigators passed away. Furthermore, the Premier League has charged City with over 100 breaches of FFP from 2009 till 2018 as they failed to provide any accurate financial information. City was also accused of not cooperating with the investigation.
Congratulations to Manchester City. A true underdog story of if you can spend £1.5bn in 15 years on signings, breach over 100 Premier League financial rules and almost get banned from Europe for breaking FFP rules, you too can win the Champions League.
— Dylan Walsh (@dylanwalsh_) June 10, 2023
Manchester City was accused of not disclosing the financial remuneration of their managers over four years, as well. UEFA has also accused them of not complying with FFP rules for over 5 years and was even banned from all UEFA competitions in 2020 for two years even though the ban was lifted shortly after.
Manchester City responded to all these allegations by saying that they are not true and Pep Guardiola even famously said “We will be there” when asked about these allegations. If found guilty possible punishments include anything from points deduction to possible expulsion from the Premier League. Currently, the Premier League has referred City to an independent commission, which will take the case to whom Manchester City can appeal.
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