After four sessions analyzing, point by point, the prosecution’s accusation and answering the questions of the collective of judges, Rui Pinto now opted for silence and did not respond to questions from the representatives of the assistants.
Some doubts remain, however, to be clarified, considered the representative of the investment fund Doyen. For example, in one of the last sessions, Rui Pinto said he did not know the meaning of extortion: “I didn’t know what extortion was”. In the allegations made in March 2019, Rui Pinto said precisely the opposite, but the court quickly resolved this issue: “In the statements presented at trial, he (Rui Pinto) alluded to the contradictions between some points of the statements he made now at trial and those he had made in 2019”???????? Once he acknowledged that his words were, at times, contradictory, then “the court did not see the need to reproduce the statements given in March”.
Rui Pinto is responsible for 90 crimes related to accessing the computer systems and emails of people with links to Sporting, the Portuguese Football Federation, the Doyen investment fund, the PLMJ law firm, the Attorney General’s Office and the Bar Association. Amadeu Guerra, former director of the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action, José Miguel Júdice, lawyer, Jorge Jesus, coach, and Bruno de Carvalho, former president of Sporting, are some of those targeted.
In a brief statement, Aníbal Pinto, a lawyer who was allegedly involved in the extortion process of the Doyen investment fund, rejected any intention of wanting to earn 300 thousand euros from the case, as stated in the MP’s indictment. However, he recognized, as he has done, by the way: “I don’t work for free”.
I would never charge that amount. This amount was agreed with Doctor Pedro Henriques (lawyer representing Nélio Lucas, from Doyen) to pay the defendant Rui Pinto, who would receive 125 thousand euros over five years”, he clarified.
Aníbal Pinto also underlined that Nélio Lucas even proposed the amount of one million euros, for him to hand over Rui Pinto. “Then I said I was joking,” he added.
So far, Rui Pinto has answered questions from the panel of judges. In total, there were four sessions of questions and answers and analysis, point by point, of the prosecution’s accusation. In the first session, Rui Pinto revealed that he was working with the secret services of Ukraineanalyzing satellite and surveillance camera images, but spoke mainly about the moments that gave rise to Football Leaks???????? Even so, even assuming that he had access to the email accounts of several Sporting workers, Rui Pinto always denied saying who worked with him.
Rui Pinto says in court that he is helping the Ukrainian secret services
A week later, in the second session, the main subject was the access made to the Doyen investment fund accounts and attempted extortion. And here, Rui Pinto explained that he did not make any initial access to the accounts, only knowing that this was happening. Regarding the extortion attempt, he acknowledged that “it was all childish” and that “I didn’t know what extortion was”.
Among the hundreds of points contained in the Public Prosecution’s indictment, the question arose of the creation of a blog that divulged the e-mails from Benfica. Rui Pinto denied being the main creator of the blog ‘Mercado de Benfica’ — website where the e-mails from Benfica. “The author worked at Football Leaks”, he explained. Furthermore, the alleged hacker admitted that he had access to the mailboxes and contents of the folders of Inês Pinto da Costa, from the PLMJ law firm, whose information later gave rise to Luanda Leaks.
Rui Pinto on the attempted extortion of Doyen: “I was not aware of what the word extortion meant”
Already in the last session in which questions were asked by the collective of judgesRui Pinto argued that there was a “security gap” in the network of the Attorney General’s Office. “Everyone who was connected to the PGR’s internal network was available to know these passwords“as there was a note in the email’s internal contact list with all the passwords.
