NEW HEAT ON CITY IN CASH CHEAT PROBE
Football Leaks hacker will help Premier League inquiry Fresh evidence of club’s ‘inf lated’ sponsorship deals
THE controversial figure at the heart of the ‘Football Leaks’ organisation that exposed wrongdoing across global football is willing to assist the Premier League as they continue to investigate Manchester City for alleged breaches of their rules.
Portuguese Rui Pinto is currently in a witness protection programme in his home country, where a trial against him for alleged hacking and other charges is likely to resume next month.
A self-styled whistleblower, Pinto, 32, did a deal with Portuguese judicial authorities to hand over hundreds of millions of documents in his possession that might assist them with various corruption investigations. Previously under house arrest, he has been at liberty since August last year, albeit with roundthe-clock police protection for his own security.
Neither the Premier League nor City will make any comment on precisely what breaches are being looked at, only that the allegations arise from ‘Football Leaks’ materials, sourced by Pinto and published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2018.
Pinto has now said he is willing to co-operate with the Premier League — and indeed any investigatory body looking at wrongdoing or corruption — if they want assistance.
Pinto’s lawyers, Francisco and Luisa Teixeira da Mota, told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘Rui remains committed t o col l aborate with national and international authorities in order to help uncover wrongdoing in football and contribute to football’s transparency.’
The development comes at the end of a week when three of the most senior judges in Britain ruled that the existence of a legal battle between the league and City — now two-and-ahalf years old — should no longer remain secret.
Dozens of pages of paperwork released in conjunction with the
Court of Appeal judgment have laid bare the League’s frustration at City’s l ong- t erm non- cooperation and refusal to hand over documents that might incriminate them — or indeed exonerate them.
League lawyers told one hearing ‘the tactic the club has adopted has been to make as many procedural applications and complaints as it possibly can to slow the day when it will actually have to provide the documents and information.’ Other
papers laid out how the Premier League issued a formal complaint against City as long ago as August 2019, seeking disclosure of information, then began arbitration proceedings when City argued the Premier League wasn’t independent.
City began the arbitration process then made a legal challenge to its legitimacy, and have made a series of secret legal appeals since to keep all these matters secret.
This newspaper discovered the extent of the legal wrangling in April but was prevented from reporting them. A judge, under the principles of ‘open justice’, did allow The Mail on Sunday access to hearings however, which we report upon today.
Another judge, Lord Justice Males, expressed in his verdict to make the case public his frustration at City’s non-cooperation with the Premier League.
He wrote: ‘This is an investigation which commenced in December 2018. It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two-and-a-half years, during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned as Premier League champions.’ The Mail on Sunday today reveals fresh details of apparently anomalous sponsorship payments made to City since 2010. It is simply not known what if anything City have now handed to Premier League investigators, or whether the Premier League will seek assistance from Pinto at some point in their investigation. There are multiple examples of ‘whistleblower’ defences where documents obtained illegally have been used to expose wrongdoing, from Edward Snowden to the Panama Papers. Prosecutors in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and now Portugal among other countries have sought Pinto’s help to probe corruption from tax avoidance to money laundering. In 2019, a former senior FIFA official told this newspaper that FIFA had been using ‘Football Leaks’ documents as a ‘hugely useful investigative tool’ for years, despite being aware they may have been obtained by hacking, because in many cases FIFA could not trust clubs to provide truthful information.