Rui Pinto, the hacker behind the Football Leaks website, is facing fresh security concerns after Portuguese authorities withdrew his protected witness status, his lawyers said.
Pinto’s Portuguese lawyers, Francisco and Luisa Teixeira da Mota, and French lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth said in a joint statement on Friday, October 2, that he was told on Wednesday his special security programme would end on October 10. The programme has been in place since August 2020.
“In a few days, without having been given a prior hearing as required by law, he would lose the secure, confidential housing assigned to him and be forced to find a new home urgently, with no guarantee that police protection would be maintained,” the lawyers said.
They warned that the decision could leave Pinto in serious danger, noting that he was physically attacked in Lisbon last April and remains involved in legal cases concerning powerful figures.
The 37-year-old self-taught computer expert entered witness protection after his January 2019 arrest in Hungary and extradition to Portugal.
After more than a year in pre-trial detention, Pinto gave investigators access to millions of encrypted files he had started publishing in 2015.
The files exposed financial irregularities, tax evasion and other questionable practices in elite football, helping trigger investigations across several countries, including the Premier League’s financial investigation into Manchester City.
Pinto was given a suspended four-year sentence in September 2023 for attempted extortion, unlawful data access and breaches of correspondence.
