Today begins the trial of Rui Pinto, accused of 93 crimes. The prosecutor accuses the whistleblower of 68 crimes of improper access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six for illegitimate access and one for computer sabotage.
The hacker is accused of having invaded the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), the PLMJ law firm, Sporting, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) and the Doyen investment fund, which accuses him of extortion between 2015 and 2019. .
The files revealed by the Portuguese hacker from Vila Nova de Gaia gave rise to two of the biggest cases of denunciation in recent years: Football Leaks and Luanda Leaks.
“I don’t consider myself a hacker,” Rio Pinto said recently, preferring to be considered a whistleblower. “Someone who seeks, receives and analyzes information relating to relevant crimes such as corruption and tax fraud and decides to share it with international media or directly with the authorities should be considered an asset. whistleblower [denunciante]. Take the Panama Papers as an example. Today most people have forgotten that it was an act of hacking” [pirataria informática], he said in an interview with Der Spiegel, quoted by Expresso.
Football Leaks has rocked the world of powerful European football in recent years. This case revealed 18.6 million documents condensed into 18.6 terabytes of information. A total of 60 journalists in 12 countries have been analyzing the mountain of information over seven months to reveal a world of corruption and tax evasion involving players, clubs, agents.
Rui Pinto, under the pseudonym John, was the source that revealed these documents and handed them over to journalists to expose the deals that some in the beautiful game world want to stay out of the spotlight.
The archives revealed several stories about various personalities in world football such as Cristiano Ronaldo, José Mourinho or superagent Jorge Mendes.
In the case of CR7, the revelations led the Spanish tax authorities to accuse him of tax fraud amounting to 14.7 million euros. To close the case, the Portuguese footballer had to pay a fine of 18.8 million euros, thus escaping a 23-month prison sentence.
Spanish courts accused the Portuguese player of having “consciously” created companies in Ireland and the British Virgin Islands to defraud the Spanish tax authorities in the amount of 14.7 million euros between 2011 and 2014.
In January 2019, Cristiano Ronaldo had to go to the Madrid court in person, after being refused the agreement to be signed by proxy. The Spanish magistrate also did not accept the request of the player’s lawyers to enter the garage, in order to avoid journalists.
But the hacker did not stop there. At the beginning of 2020, the International Investigative Journalists Consortium (ICIJ) exposed a new case: Luanda Leaks and the calls from the Angolan businesswoman, daughter of former President José Eduardo dos Santos: “Isabel dos Santos made a fortune at the expense of the Angolan people, reveals Luanda Leaks ”, according to ICIJ.
Rui Pinto said recently that he considers “revolting that Portugal has become a laundry for Angolan elites”, he said in an interview with Der Spiegel.
As a result, the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office opened investigations for suspected money laundering and related tax fraud, among other operations, with transfers of more than 100 million euros from Sonangol to a consultant in Dubai.
Portuguese citizens Sarju Raikundalia, Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha, Mário Leite da Silva and Paula Oliveira were accused in Angola due to this case. “They are people whose names do appear, but they are façade, since the companies do in fact belong to Isabel dos Santos,” said Helder Pitta Grós in January 2020.
Following the disclosure of this case, Isabel dos Santos announced her departure from several companies in Portugal: Efacec, the Eurobic bank and the telecommunications company NOS.
