Manchester City find themselves at the centre of the biggest story in Premier League history as they face potential relegation or expulsion from a division they currently lead, after being found guilty of nearly all of the 115 charges levied against them.
But this scandal had humble beginnings.
Rui Pinto is the Portuguese hacker who blew the whistle on City's financial cheating, prompting an entire Premier League investigation.
Through his website Football Leaks, he published confidential documents that showed City broke league rules over a nine-season period in 2018. German newspaper Der Spiegel's subsequent investigative report detailing allegations against City was based on these documents.
Pinto was in other legal trouble by the time the City allegations took the football world by storm. After being unmasked as the man behind Football Leaks, he faced 147 charges that included computer fraud, attempted extortion and violating privacy of correspondence in Portugal, having published a number of stories about other players and clubs including those relating to Porto and Benfica. He was extradited from Hungary, where he had been living, in March 2019.
He described himself as a "whistleblower" and denied wrongdoing, claiming he was trying to expose "what was wrong with football". He spent more than a year in custody before going under house arrest before a criminal trial in Lisbon. In September 2023, he received a four-year suspended jail sentence and has been living under...
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