Ferenc Isza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A computer hacker whose efforts revealed often troubling practices that shape the multi-billion-dollar global soccer industry was charged with 147 crimes this week by Portugal’s national prosecutor.
For four years between 2015 and his arrest in Hungary in January, the hacker, Rui Pinto, a 30-year-old from Portugal, sowed anxiety in the soccer world by publishing hundreds of internal documents onto an internet platform he set up called Football Leaks. Pinto later collaborated with a European media consortium led by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel to disseminate even more documents.
The information Football Leaks made public — including player contracts, internal team financial documents and confidential emails — pulled back the curtain on the murky world of soccer finance, led to criminal tax prosecutions of several top players and even helped prompt officials in the United States to reopen a sexual assault investigation involving the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.