The creator of Football Leaks, Rui Pinto, admitted this Tuesday, at the end of the final arguments of the trial, that he violated the law, but reiterated his regret, valuing the learning of recent years.
Urged by the collective of judges to exercise his right to speak after the intervention of his defense and the responses of assistants, the main defendant in the case, aged 34, noted that his lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, had already addressed the essential , concentrating, therefore, only on the question of his repentance.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the lawyers are wrong if they consider that there is no sincere repentance on my part. I’m not going to say that my life is destroyed, because I’m still alive and while there’s life, there’s hope… But I had wrong behaviors that violated the law, clearly. Nothing justifies violating lawyers’ mailboxes, lawyers have the right to professional secrecy, despite the repercussions of Luanda Leaks”, he said.
Recalling his arrest in Budapest, in January 2019, and more than a year in which he was in preventive detention, Rui Pinto was asked by the presiding judge, Margarida Alves, whether the regret derived from what had happened to him or the effects caused about the other participants in the process, something that the defendant made an effort to oppose.
“That’s not where my regret comes from. This is a construction, we continue to grow and I learned a lot. It is not a consequence of being deprived of my freedom. Nowadays I have an awareness that I haven’t had for years… I’m a complex character», said Rui Pinto in the session held at the Central Criminal Court in Lisbon.
Then, the other defendant in this case, Aníbal Pinto, chose to speak one last time before the collective of judges to reaffirm his conduct throughout the entire process, repeating the honesty of his actions in the face of the crime of attempted extortion by the who responds in this judgment.
«Throughout more than 60 years of life, I have never committed any crime», said Rui Pinto’s former lawyer, continuing: «For the sake of my defence, I would like it to be clear that at no time was my behavior criminally reprehensible».
The interventions of the two defendants closed the final arguments of the trial, with the collective of judges scheduling the reading of the judgment for April 28, at 10:00 am. However, Margarida Alves assumed the possibility of non-substantial changes to the facts and legal qualification, which could still lead to a postponement of the sentence, if further steps are considered necessary by the parties to the process.
Rui Pinto, 34 years old, 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 for extortion, in the attempted form. This last crime concerns Doyen and was what also led to the pronunciation 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 program of witness protection at an undisclosed location and under police protection.
