Football Leaks

Football Leaks was a leak in association football revealing "murky" financial transactions in the world of European professional football and exposes the tax tricks employed by some of the continent's biggest stars. It began with a series of investigations published in December 2016 and November 2018 by media partners of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), such as Der Spiegel, Mediapart, El Mundo, Expresso, Falter, L'espresso, and Le Soir.

Initially, Football Leaks was a website containing confidential information about notable footballers and clubs.

Rui Pinto, the author of Football Leaks, was arrested in Budapest, Hungary, on 16 January 2019 at the request of the Portuguese authorities for suspicion of attempted qualified extortion, violation of secrecy and illegally accessing information. He was extradited to Portugal and has been charged with 147 crimes by the Public Ministry.

Rui Pinto was found guilty of three counts of intercepting correspondence and accessing private emails, one count of attempted extortion and five counts of unauthorized entry and hacking into computers belonging to the Doyen Sports Investment Fund, the Portuguese attorney general’s office, and a Lisbon law firm. As a result, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence of four years.