“Totally unacceptable”, “total wanton”, “very difficult” situation. Five lawyers who saw their e-mails allegedly “hacked” by Rui Pinto spoke about the attack in court. Asked whether they had connections to Football Leaks or Luanda Leaks, two said they did not and three refused to answer.
Rui Pinto’s lawyer questioned Maria João Mata, one of the lawyers who testified this Tuesday in Lisbon, about whether she has had any professional connection to Angola – the country of Isabel dos Santos, suspected of embezzling funds in the Luanda Leaks case. “A few years ago, but yes,” was the response from the lawyer, who once taught Angolan law.
All the lawyers heard in the morning – in addition to Maria João Mata, also attended Bárbara Correia, Tiago Castro, Sandra Lopes and Duarte Schmidt Lino – worked at the time of the attack, in 2018, in PLMJ. Everyone guaranteed that they had not seen any content from their publicly disclosed email boxes.
Sandra Lopes, the witness who went into more detail, said she knew about the attack after Christmas – Rui Pinto’s lawyer insisted on knowing when PLMJ reported the incident to the injured. The lawyer said the company communicated the situation at a meeting in an auditorium. At the time, he reported, those targeted joked: “maybe it was Rui Pinto …”.
All witnesses assured that their professional emails contained sensitive content. According to them, PLMJ provided them with a list of all folders that would have been accessed by the hacker.
Asked if his professional activity was in any way linked to Football Leaks or Luanda Leaks, Duarte Schmidt Lino claimed professional secrecy to refuse to talk about the “concrete content” of his email box. Bárbara Correia and Maria João Mata did the same.
The 20th session of Rui Pinto’s trial continues in the afternoon with the statements of eight more witnesses, all of whom are lawyers.
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