The Central Criminal Court of Lisbon maintained the measures of coercion under house arrest and the prohibition of internet access to Rui Pinto and admitted the four compensation claims filed against the creator of Football Leaks.
The information is contained in an order issued on Wednesday by Judge Margarida Alves, to which the Lusa agency had access this Thursday, in which the president of the panel of judges who will judge the case says that the assumptions that led to the application of this custodial measure.
“Despite what was alleged by the defendant Rui Pedro Gonçalves Pinto in the application (…), and not ignoring the court’s critical sense and availability to collaborate with the justice that it has been demonstrating and which is recognized in the case file, the truth is that it is understood that only the application of the custodial deprivation measure sufficiently ensures the precautionary requirements that the present case requires, combined with the prohibition on accessing the internet and any devices that allow its access ”, justifies the judge .
Rui Pinto was in preventive detention from March 22, 2019 until April 8 of this year, the day he was placed under house arrest, but in housing provided by the Judiciary Police, and he was prohibited from accessing the internet and having access to devices that so, by decision of the criminal investigating judge (JIC) Cláudia Pina.
The JIC justified the decision, on the one hand, with the inversion of the defendant’s stance, which started to present “a critical sense and a willingness to collaborate with the justice” and, on the other, saying that the borders were subject to high controls due to the covid-19 pandemic, which is why he understood that “the danger of escape was reduced”.
According to Judge Margarida Alves, “such considerations remain”, adding the court order that “the factual and legal assumptions that determined the application of the current coercion measure to the defendant are not altered”.
“In fact, the defendant’s collaboration and the critical sense that he will have come to show were the assumptions that determined the alteration of the preventive detention coercion measure to which he had been subjected. Such circumstances do not, therefore, constitute, at this moment, any new element that allows us to change the enforcement measures applied, keeping the presuppositions of fact and law unchanged ”, the order reads.
Aníbal Pinto, Rui Pinto’s lawyer at the time of the facts and who will be tried for the extortion attempt (in October 2015), from between 500 thousand euros to one million euros to the Doyen investment fund, will remain free to wait judgment.
Judge Margarida Alves also accepted the four civil damages claims presented by Doyen, in this case against Rui Pinto and Aníbal Pinto, and by Rui Costa Pereira, Inês de Almeida Costa and João Medeiros, former lawyers of PLMJ, one of the spied entities by Rui Pinto.
The president of the panel of judges, who will have Ana Paula Conceição and Pedro Lucas as deputies, after the removal of judges Paulo Registo and Helena Leitão, scheduled a meeting with the defendants’ representatives and the prosecutor for 2:30 pm on 2 July , at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, on the Campus of Justice, to schedule dates for the trial.
At the beginning of June this year, the Lisbon Court of Appeal dismissed the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) appeal and upheld the instructive decision, handed down on January 17 this year, which ruled (brought to trial) Rui Pinto for 90 crimes and not by the 147 that were found in the prosecution of the Public Ministry (MP): 68 of undue access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access and even for computer sabotage to Sporting SAD and for extortion attempt,
In September 2019, the MP accused Rui Pinto of 147 crimes, 75 of which were illegitimate access, 70 of violation of correspondence, one of computer sabotage and one of extortion attempt, for accessing the computer systems of Sporting, Doyen, da PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Football Federation, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Score Platform and subsequent disclosure of dozens of confidential documents from these entities.
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