The trial is scheduled to start at 9:30 am at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, at the Justice Campus, and will have, on average, three sessions per week during the next few months.
Rui Pinto, 31, will answer for 68 crimes of undue access, 14 for violating correspondence and 6 for illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Football Federation ( FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form.
The crime of attempted extortion (between 500 thousand and one million euros) concerns Doyen, with the counterpart of the creator of Football Leaks not revealing documents from this investment fund, with the intermediation of Aníbal Pinto, then Rui’s lawyer Chick.
According to the MP, in October 2015, there was a face-to-face meeting at the service station on the A5 motorway in Oeiras, between Nélio Lucas, at that time, legal representative of Doyen Sports, and Aníbal Pinto, who served as an intermediary.
Rui Pinto has been free since August 7, “due to his collaboration” with the Judiciary Police (PJ) and his “critical sense”, but is, for security reasons, inserted in the witness protection program at a local undisclosed and under police protection.
Arrested in Hungary and handed over to national authorities on the basis of a European Arrest Warrant, the defendant was in preventive detention from 22 March 2019 until 8 April this year, the day on which he was placed under house arrest, but in housing provided by the PJ .
On January 17 of this year, the Lisbon Criminal Instruction Court pronounced (brought to trial) Rui Pinto by 90 and not by the 147 crimes that were included in the prosecution of the Public Ministry (MP). In the reading of the instructional decision, Judge Cláudia Pina argued that Rui Pinto “could never be classified in the category of ‘whistleblower’ (whistleblower)”, since he had a “performance different from that of whistleblower” and acted in “illicit way”.
The prosecution of the MP, to which the order of pronouncement refers, maintains that, from the beginning of 2015 and until January 16, 2019, Rui Pinto “equipped himself with technical knowledge and adequate equipment that allowed him to unauthorized manner, to computer systems and third-party mailboxes ”.
Between November 6, 2018 and January 7, 2019, Rui Pinto acceded, according to the accusation, 307 times to the PGR servers and obtained documents from the Tancos, BES and Operation Marquês processes.
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Regarding Sporting, the MP says that Rui Pinto entered, between 20 July and 30 September 2015, in the email boxes of 19 members of the board of directors and the football department (professional and training) of Sporting, among which was then club president Bruno de Carvalho, former coach Jorge Jesus, Otávio Machado and Augusto Inácio.
As for the FPF, the accusation states that, between 04:31 and 08:00 on March 1, 2018, Rui Pinto made 48 accesses to servers / computers.
Regarding the PLMJ law firm, the prosecution says that the defendant, after becoming aware of the team of lawyers that would defend Benfica in the ‘e-toupeira’ case, “decided to access the computer and e-mail system” of this company and its lawyers .
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As for the facts involving Doyen, the MP reports that Rui Pinto accessed, in September 2015, the computer system of this investment fund and obtained dozens of confidential documents, mainly player and club contracts.
The start of the trial of Rui Pinto, creator of Football Leaks, scheduled for Friday, marks the return of justice after the judicial holidays and puts the focus of Portuguese society in the debate on the status of whistleblower.
‘Hero’ for some, for exposing alleged illegal practices and potential tax avoidance schemes on the Internet by big names and football institutions, ‘villain’ for others, for having illegally accessed private computer systems: this is the media polarization created around from a young man of 31 years who attended the University of Porto for a degree in History and became self-taught in terms of computer skills.
The ‘Rui Pinto case’ is unparalleled in the recent history of Portuguese justice and has sparked an international debate on the concept of ‘whistleblower’ (whistleblower) and the balance between the right of people and companies to reserve and the alleged public interest in the information obtained through the Football Leaks platform.
The defense of the creator of the site – in charge of lawyers William Bourdon (who has already represented whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Antoine Deltour), Francisco Teixeira da Mota and Luísa Teixeira da Mota – invokes in his arguments the inclusion of the accused on the protection of whistleblowers, a regime on which the European Parliament approved a directive in April 2019 and which the Portuguese State has yet to transpose into national legislation.
This legislation – the first at European level on the protection of whistleblowers – applies to people who wish to raise awareness of possible violations of European Union law in several areas, including money laundering, tax fraud, public procurement, security products and transport, environmental protection, public health, consumer protection and personal data protection.
Supporting the thesis of Rui Pinto’s representatives – in which the public interest in the information disclosed outweighs the seriousness of the alleged illicit acts – is the collaboration with the judicial authorities of France, Belgium and the Netherlands as a whistleblower until his arrest, and which was confirmed by Eurojust, the European Judicial Cooperation Unit, with the provision of information and documents in its possession.
At the same time, in the list of 45 witnesses listed by the young Portuguese, there are several names with no known connection to the facts contained in the process, but which may reveal the public interest of the information exposed. Among the witnesses are the North American whistleblower Edward Snowden, former MEP Ana Gomes, the director of the Judiciary Police (PJ), Luís Neves, or Angolan journalist and activist Rafael Marques.
On the other hand, there is the accusation of the Public Ministry (MP), who also opposed the release of Rui Pinto on August 7, after being under house arrest since April 8, 2020 and more than a year in preventive detention. Prosecutor Marta Viegas, the Public Prosecutor who will be present at the trial, defended the maintenance of the coercion measure to stay in the home, with a ban on accessing the Internet and devices that allow it.
At issue would be article 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides for danger of escape, danger for the preservation or veracity of evidence, danger of continuation of criminal activity or serious disturbance of public order and tranquility as reasons to justify the deprivation of freedom. However, Judge Margarida Alves justified the release with “continuous and consistent collaboration” with the PJ and the “critical sense” of the creator of Football Leaks.
Rui Pinto starts to be tried on September 4th for 90 crimes: 68 of undue access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for attempted extortion to the Doyen investment fund.
Aníbal Pinto, Rui Pinto’s lawyer at the time of the facts, will be tried for the extortion attempt on Doyen.
Rui Pinto, creator of the Football Leaks platform and also responsible for the Luanda Leaks process, in which the Angolan Isabel dos Santos is the main target, is at liberty, and is now inserted in the witness protection program in an undisclosed location and under protection police, for security reasons.
In early June, the Lisbon Court of Appeal dismissed the MP’s appeal and upheld the instructional decision, handed down on January 17, which pronounced (brought to trial) Rui Pinto for 90 crimes and not the 147 that were in the prosecution of the MP.
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 and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR).
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