“There were several irregularities in Rui Pinto’s extradition under European law”, particularly with regard to the “principle of (rule of) specialty”, said the France Press agency Luísa Teixeira da Mota, one of Rui Pinto’s lawyers.
The defense considers the Portuguese hacker “a very important European whistleblower” and accuses the Portuguese justice of harassing his client for crimes that were not originally included in the original European arrest warrant (EAW).
The specialty rule prohibits the extradited person from being tried for a crime other than the one that gave rise to the extradition request.
As the creator of Football Leaks never renounced the principle of specialty – so that the Portuguese justice could accuse and judge him for facts and crimes other than these -, the MP had to ask the Hungarian authorities to extend the EAW, which authorized , on August 29, based on new facts and evidence found in the course of the investigation.
The criminal investigating judge, who decided to put Rui Pinto on trial for 90 crimes, considered the European arrest warrant to be legal.
After being arrested in Hungary and extradited to Portugal, under an international mandate, Rui Pinto has been in prison since March 2019, having recently revealed that he delivered a hard drive to the Whistleblower Protection Platform in Africa, which allowed the recent disclosure Luanda Leaks, a corruption case related to the Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos.
At the age of 30, Rui Pinto will be tried for 68 crimes of improper access, for 14 crimes of violation of correspondence, for six crimes of illegitimate access and for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form, the latter one crime for which lawyer Aníbal Pinto was also pronounced.
In September 2019, the Public Ministry (MP) had accused the hacker 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 computer systems. from Sporting, from Doyen, from the law firm PLMJ, from the Portuguese Football Federation, from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and from the Score Platform and subsequent disclosure of dozens of confidential documents of these entities.
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