Rui Pinto to stay under police protection in Portugal

Computer hacker Rui Pinto, whose Football Leaks website helped trigger the Premier League investigation into Manchester City's finances, will remain under police protection in Portugal, authorities said Friday.

Portugal's Justice Ministry said protection measures that were due to end on Saturday would stay in effect pending a new decision.

The ministry said a previous resolution was nullified because Pinto had not been properly informed of the reasons for the decision and had not had the opportunity to challenge it.

Pinto's lawyers last week denounced irregularities in the proceedings and pointed to threats against him. Pinto, 37, was assaulted in Lisbon in April and said he had moved to a secret location because of multiple death threats.

He has been a protected witness since 2020 after agreeing to give Portuguese authorities access to millions of files gathered before his arrest.

Pinto was arrested in Hungary in January 2019 and extradited to Portugal. He spent more than a year in pre-trial detention before agreeing to cooperate with authorities by granting access to encrypted data in his possession.

He has been both a defendant and a protected witness in Portugal and is also cooperating with investigators from other European countries.

During his first trial, Pinto admitted hacking computers to obtain millions of documents that he began publishing online in late 2015. The documents were passed to a consortium of European investigative media outlets and led to tax adjustments and judicial investigations in several countries.

A Portuguese court gave Pinto a suspended four-year sentence in September 2023 after finding him guilty of attempted extortion, illegal access to data and breach of correspondence.