José Amador, who led the investigation, and Hugo Monteiro were again questioned at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, following a request from the defense of Aníbal Pinto, with a view to clarifying the PJ’s external diligence reports (RDE).
The inspectors of the Judiciary Police (PJ) heard in today’s session of the trial of the Football Leaks case denied any “strategy tuning” in the meeting with the prosecutor of the Public Ministry (MP) after the beginning of the proceedings in court.
José Amador, who led the investigation, and Hugo Monteiro were again questioned at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, following a request from the defense of Aníbal Pinto, with a view to clarifying the PJ’s external diligence reports (RDE) on the operation. of surveillance to the meeting in the service area of the A5 motorway, in October 2015, as well as the invitation email for a meeting in September 2020 with the magistrate Marta Viegas.
“I did it without any mental reservations or malice. There is no strategy here. There is a meeting with parties who are, in the context of the investigation, stakeholders and wanted to clarify doubts. with the prosecutor of the trial, requested by the prosecutor”, said José Amador, stressing: “No strategy was fine-tuned, questions were answered and they are perfectly normal”.
The investigation coordinator of the Football Leaks case – which will continue to be questioned in the afternoon – explained that the procedure of scheduling meetings is normal for the PJ and that “it occurs according to events and situations” in the different processes.
“It is nothing extraordinary”, he reiterated, admitting today that he does not know whether on the date of this meeting, on September 8, 2020, the trial had already started or not. [n.d.r.: começou em 04 de setembro].
About the meeting, José Amador confirmed the presence of colleagues Rogério Bravo, Paulo Abalada, José Garcia and Hugo Monteiro, in addition to prosecutor Marta Viegas – who assumed that he already knew him before this process -, and said that inspector Aida Freitas was not present , despite having also been summoned in the aforementioned email. Subsequently, he devalued the importance of the meeting, given the issues of defense of Aníbal Pinto.
“I don’t know how long it lasted. It didn’t really have an agenda. It was an informal meeting. The “major” of the meeting took place without my colleagues, with the exception of my coordinator [Rogério Bravo] and the issues that I remember best were related to the forensic report”, he noted, without failing to express an outburst during the testimony: “I seem to be being judged by a content and this has nothing transcendent”.
As for the meeting in the service area of the A5 motorway between the former CEO of Doyen Nélio Lucas, the employee Pedro Henriques and Aníbal Pinto, the inspector explained the reasons for having carried out two RDEs – “one for a framework and the other for facts in a context different” – and relativized the language differences between the two documents.
“Regarding the issues of style and writing, within my knowledge, I will write what they tell me. When people subscribe, they are confronted with certain content and if they did not agree, people would say that it was not so. All these elements of the quotation marks or of the names were from moments that were transmitted to me. I am a PJ inspector, I am not a university student of the Portuguese language”, he summarized.
Inspector Hugo Monteiro followed the same line of reasoning regarding Aníbal Pinto’s defense issues, considering that the RDE was “the result of what was transmitted by the inspectors who were in the diligence” to José Amador, who wrote the article.
“I’m not going to question a colleague for the score he uses. If there’s any inaccuracy, I’ll question it. I signed [o RDE]because it makes sense”, stressed Hugo Monteiro, adding that he was not aware of the existence of photographs of the operation on the A5 or if video surveillance images of the commercial space where the October 2015 meeting took place were requested.
Regarding the meeting with the prosecutor, Hugo Monteiro said that it took place at the PJ’s premises in Lisbon, and that he had a “very brief” participation, ending up being dismissed in a short time, remaining only between five to 10 minutes.
“No strategies were refined. They were technical clarifications”, replied the inspector, in the face of the insistence of questions from the defense of Aníbal Pinto, who came to be targeted by the judge-president Margarida Alves: “You are trying to misrepresent what were the words of the inspector. (…) In terms of allegations, he will draw conclusions”.
However, Aníbal Pinto’s defense ended up requesting the extraction of a certificate from the two inspectors for the Public Ministry to investigate the possible practice of crimes of false testimony, false document, abuse of power and breach of duty, with the court granting the two applications against José Amador and Hugo Monteiro.
Rui Pinto, 33, 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 PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Federation of Football (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage of Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form. This last crime concerns Doyen and was what also led to the indictment of lawyer Aníbal Pinto.
The creator of Football Leaks has been free since August 7, 2020, “due to his collaboration” with the Judiciary Police (PJ) and his “critical sense”, but is, for security reasons, included in the witness protection in an undisclosed location and under police protection.
