Manchester City has been found guilty of the majority of 115 charges relating to breaches of Premier League financial regulations. The investigation into the club’s conduct was initiated following the publication of internal documents by the website Football Leaks.
Rui Pinto founded Football Leaks in 2015 with the stated purpose of exposing confidential information concerning football clubs, players, and agents. The platform released internal emails detailing sponsorship deals and payments that formed the basis of the Premier League's case against the club.
Pinto, who was identified as the founder of the website in 2019 while detained in Lisbon, provided over three terabytes of data to the German magazine Der Spiegel and the European Investigative Collaborations consortium. These disclosures provided the evidence used to examine the financial activities of Manchester City.