The media impact caused by the revelations of the platform ‘Football Leaks’, created by Rui Pinto, about Doyen Sports Investments was this Wednesday compared by the former manager of the investment fund, Nélio Lucas, to an “authentic public lynching”.
In the testimony initiated in this 20th session of the trial of the case ‘Football Leaks’, at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, the businessman, 41 years old, attacked Rui Pinto for what happened, extending his criticisms to the media.
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“It was a real public lynching and it continues to happen. This was the complete destruction of what was my good reputation and that of investors. Patience has limits,” he said.
Stressing that for “five years he has been constantly being beaten by the press”, based on what he considered “analogies of a person who made his own comments”, Nélio Lucas also defended that the main defendant in the process “did what he wanted, tried extorting money and seizing people’s bank details” and claimed that the impact “is impossible to quantify” on a personal and professional level.
“It had nothing to do with the concern to clean up football. I was talking about ‘offshore’ and then I was trying to create an ‘offshore’ society to receive the money”, he reiterated, adding: “There are limits to everything and this cannot go unpunished . I can only answer that it was worth it when this is over and this individual is convicted.”
The final stretch of the audition was marked by a new moment of tension between the former administrator of Doyen and the collective of judges, after Nélio Lucas was irritated by the story of buying a yacht, exposed in a statement from ‘Football Leaks’, which she read aloud, which prompted an unusual comparison: “I’m like that lady who was raped and then has to explain why she was raped.”
Assistant judge Ana Paula Conceição asked the witness to be calm, but Nélio Lucas did not back down and insisted: “Because I am a victim of a crime, do I have to explain who I am?”, to which the president of the collective, Margarida Alves, ended up by intervene more assertively, stressing that she was in charge of the audience. Then, there was a short break and the last minutes of the audition took place in a less tense environment.
The trial continues on Thursday from 9:30 am with the continuation of the hearing of Nélio Lucas, now at the stage of inquiries by the assistants of the process and by the representatives of the defendants.
Rui Pinto, 32, is responsible for a total of 90 crimes: 68 of improper access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, the law firm PLMJ, the Portuguese Federation of Football (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and extortion, as attempted. This last crime concerns Doyen and it was also what led to the prosecution of lawyer Aníbal Pinto.
The creator of Football Leaks has been at large since August 7, “due to his collaboration” with the Judiciary Police (PJ) and his “critical sense”, but he is, for security reasons, included in the program for the protection of witnesses in an undisclosed location and under police protection.
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