Criminal or saviour? Manchester City whistleblower Rui Pinto splits opinion

Pinto, whose leaks of private documents prompted the investigation into Manchester City, is understood to fear for his safety

More than a decade after Rui Pinto set up the Football Leaks website in a crusade triggered by the Fifa scandal in 2015, he finds himself in the middle of a growing storm. The former history student with trademark spiky hair who used to make extra cash selling books about the second world war has not held back with his statements on social media since Manchester City’s guilty verdict from an independent Premier League commission.

The first targets for Pinto, whose leaks of private documents prompted first Uefa then the Premier League to investigate City’s financial affairs, were what he alleged were the club’s “cheating” executives for demonstrating “a complete lack of respect for the rules”. On Wednesday he turned his attention to the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino.

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