U-turn! Man City whistleblower Pinto keeps his witness protection after all

Rui Pinto will remain under witness protection. Portuguese authorities made a dramatic U-turn on Friday, suspending their decision to remove the Manchester City whistleblower from the protection programme just one day before it was due to expire.

Details: The Portuguese Justice Ministry confirmed in a statement that the protection measures, which were due to end on Saturday, October 10, will remain in place pending a new decision. The earlier resolution was nullified because Pinto had not been 'duly informed of the reasons for the decision' and had not been given the opportunity to challenge it. Pinto's lawyers had raised concerns last week over irregularities in the proceedings and the real threats facing their client. The 37-year-old was assaulted in Lisbon in April and said he had to move to a secret location due to the multiple death threats he received. Pinto has been a protected witness since 2020, when he agreed to give Portuguese authorities access to millions of files he had collected before his arrest in Budapest in 2019. His Football Leaks documents, shared with Der Spiegel, helped trigger the Premier League investigation that ended with City being found guilty of serious financial breaches, a verdict the club is appealing.

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The reversal is a remarkable retreat by the Portuguese state. Pinto was informed on September 30, just hours after the independent commission found Manchester City guilty of breaching financial rules, that his participation in the programme was being terminated. His legal team, Francisco and Luísa Teixeira da Mota alongside French lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, denounced the move as an act of state terrorism that failed to respect the rule of law, noting that the commission had concluded as far back as July that the threat level to Pinto was low, without ever hearing him. The episode also exposed a procedural embarrassment: according to the Guardian, it took the authorities 83 days to notify Pinto of the decision to end his protection. The suspension means the Football Leaks founder will keep his confidential residence and police protection while the process is re-run, and he will now be formally heard before any final ruling.

It's worth noting that Pinto remains a deeply contradictory figure in Portuguese justice: he received a four-year suspended sentence in 2023 for attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence, yet was acquitted in April 2026 of all 241 charges in a second trial, a verdict the prosecution has appealed. Whatever one's view of him, the documents he obtained remain the foundation of the biggest financial case in Premier League history, and the threats against him, whatever their source, are now treated by the state itself as real enough to require renewed scrutiny.

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