The 27th session of the Football Leaks trial was interrupted this Wednesday shortly after it started and is postponed for the next 14 days.
Shortly after the start of the session, in which the lawyer Pedro Henriques, former collaborator of Nélio Lucas at Doyen, was being heard, Judge Ana Paula Conceição received a notification, confirming the positive case of a family member’s new coronavirus. “We will interrupt the trial for the next 14 days. I do not know when we will be able to resume, they will be notified later,” said the president of the panel of judges, Margarida Alves, who had two to three weekly sessions scheduled until December 10. Rui Pinto’s trial is thus suspended for 14 days. However, with the end of the year approaching, it is more likely that the trial sessions will only resume in 2021.
Until the moment the session was suspended, it had been marked by the presentation of a request for the defense of the defendant Aníbal Pinto, even before the witness Pedro Henriques, lawyer and former collaborator of Nélio Lucas at the Doyen investment fund, began to provide testimony, in order to challenge the inquiry.
In question, according to lawyer João Pereira dos Santos, there was an alleged conversation between Pedro Henriques and the legal representative of Aníbal Pinto in another case, João Azevedo, to whom it would have been transmitted “in a clear and aggressive way that happened to Aníbal Pinto twice what’s happening to you “. The panel of judges decided to reject the application and opened the way for the witness to be questioned by the Public Ministry.
Then, Pedro Henriques started by explaining his connection to the facts of the process, which culminated in the alleged attempt to extort Doyen by defendants Rui Pinto and Aníbal Pinto.
The former employee of the investment fund recalled that in 2015 “confidential documentation from Doyen started to appear in Football Leaks” and that Nélio Lucas was receiving emails from Artem Lobuzov – who later became Rui Pinto–, in which “an amount between 500 thousand and one million euros” would be requested for the end of publications on the Internet.
“Nélio Lucas said to me ‘You may not believe it, but [Artem Lobuzov] said that this must be dealt with by lawyers and indicated Aníbal Pinto ‘. Later I could understand the reasons “, said Pedro Henriques, referring to the conversation at the meeting with Nélio Lucas and Aníbal Pinto in the service area of the A5 motorway, in Oeiras, in which the defendant said that” he had been a lawyer for a person who had withdrawn Cayman Islands money “:” There was this connection, “he noted.
Rui Pinto, 32, is responsible for a total of 90 crimes: 68 of undue access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Federation of Football (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form. This last crime concerns Doyen and was also what led to the pronunciation of the lawyer Aníbal Pinto.
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