This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

A Portuguese man behind one of the biggest exposés in the history of football has been identified as the source of a leaked cache of financial records about the business empire of Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos.

Lawyers for Rui Pinto, who is awaiting trial in Portugal on charges including alleged hacking and attempted extortion, said in 2018 he passed a non-profit whistleblowing organisation a hard drive containing data relating to Dos Santos’s business empire, which is estimated at $2.2bn.

Pinto is the founder of Football Leaks, which revealed confidential information about some of the world’s leading teams, which resulted in inquiries by tax authorities into several top players.

He was not previously known to be the source of the Luanda Leaks, a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits and accounts detailing the business operations of Dos Santos, whose father ruled Angola for 38 years before stepping down as president in September 2017.

Q&A What is the Luanda Leaks investigation? Show Hide The Luanda Leaks project is based on a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits and accounts detailing the business operations of Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president of Angola. The files were initially obtained by the anti-corruption charity Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The documents, which cover a period between 1980 and 2018, have been reviewed by more than 120 journalists from 37 media outlets, including the Guardian, the BBC and the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.

The Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times were among 37 media outlets that earlier this month reported on the contents of the leaked documents, revealing the complex financial schemes that helped Dos Santos amass vast a fortune at the expense of the Angolan state. Dos Santos denies she became a billionaire through nepotism or corruption.

The files were initially obtained by the anti-corruption charity Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Isabel Dos Santos, who left Angola after her father stepped down as president, has denied any wrongdoing. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On Monday, PPLAAF identified the founder of Football Leaks as its source, saying in a statement: “The source of the Luanda Leaks is the whistleblower Rui Pinto.”

“PPLAAF is pleased that once again a whistleblower is revealing to the world actions that go against international public interest,” said William Bourdon, the president of PPLAAF and also a lawyer for Pinto.

Bourdon, a French human rights lawyer who has also acted for Edward Snowden, added: “Like in the case of the Football Leaks, these revelations should allow for new investigations to be launched and thus help in the fight against impunity for financial crimes in Angola and in the world.”

The ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, said: “The leaking of this material to PPLAAF, and in turn to ICIJ’s media partners, provided indisputable evidence of unnecessary misery that was inflicted on the ordinary people of Angola, and the role of enablers who got rich by helping. The documents came from a concerned citizen – someone doing the right thing by the public.”

Criminal or whistleblower? The story of the man behind Football Leaks Read more

Since the publication last week of the Luanda Leaks, Dos Santos has been named as a criminal suspect in Angola, where prosecutors are investigating alleged embezzlement and mismanagement of funds during her leadership of the state oil giant Sonangol.

Dos Santos denies accusations of nepotism and corruption. She has previously denounced Angolan criminal inquiries and media reports about her financial affairs as part of a politically motivated “witch-hunt” by the new Angolan president.

“The allegations … are extremely misleading and untrue,” she said in her most recent statement. “This is a very concentrated, orchestrated and well-coordinated political attack, ahead of elections in Angola next year.”

In its statement identifying Pinto as the source of the Luanda Leaks, PPLAAF said “the disclosure of the documents to PPLAAF was not politically motivated”.

The Football Leaks website, launched in 2015, said its mission was to “show the hidden side of football”. The information it obtained and eventually shared with journalists around Europe raised concerns about the financial practices of some of the world’s biggest football clubs.

Pinto, who was operating from Budapest, was detained in Hungary in January 2019 and extradited to Portugal in March. Earlier this month, a Portuguese judge ruled he would stand trial.

Pinto faces 25 years in prison if found guilty of all 90 charges against him, his lawyer said. The charges include attempted extortion and hacking into the secret information at a number of organisations. He denies all wrongdoing and has never accepted the charges.