Rui Pinto admitted before the panel of judges that he might have committed an extortion attempt, assuming that the Football Leaks project left him “life upside down” and even some contradictions.
After four sessions in which he answered questions from the collective of judges, the creator of the Football Leaks electronic platform today refused to give further statements in the process in which he is accused and accused of a total of 90 crimes.
Before the collective of judges, Rui Pinto acknowledged that he may have committed the crime of attempted extortion in relation to Doyen in the Football Leaks process, admitting “the lack of conscience” and “childishness” of his conduct.
“I wasn’t aware of it, I never had any idea that it could constitute an extortion attempt. Today, I recognize that the behavior I engaged in could be framed as a crime of extortion in the attempted form. But, at that time, I acted with the utmost naturalness”, he said, during the trial, which takes place at the Central Criminal Court in Lisbon.
Rui Pinto said that the email sent under the name Artem Lobuzov “was not created specifically for contact with Nélio Lucas [antigo CEO do fundo de investimento Doyen]”, but which ended up being used only in this situation.
“I feel ashamed of this situation. […] It was all childish, I had no idea that Nélio Lucas was going to respond to this. This started as a provocation. It was done in the absence of the other participants in the project, who did not know anything. I ended up telling them at the end of November, I was immediately embarrassed at the time and today I am even more ashamed. I don’t feel comfortable reading this at all.”
Responding to the judges’ questions about this part of the indictment and why he had established this contact with the CEO of Doyen just three days after launching the electronic platform, Rui Pinto stressed that he just wanted to show Nélio Lucas the type of documentation he had access. “I was giving him music to squeeze him a little bit”, he summarized.
“It should never have happened, but the truth is that it happened. He was responding and things were escalating”, he considered, assuring the judges that he suggested “randomly” the value between 500 thousand euros and one million euros to resolve the issue of information da Doyen: “Since Nélio Lucas talked to me at the beginning, I wanted to see how far it would go. It was the value that came to mind at that moment”.
The defendant even stated that, for him, extortion was then “a bad word like any other”, reiterating several times the “mess” that this situation represented.
On the other hand, he said he had no explanation for the amounts that he would receive in the supposed contract to be established with Doyen (25 thousand euros per year for five years), well below the 300 thousand euros that would be due to Aníbal Pinto, the lawyer who was handling him represent in this matter, and who is also accused in the process.
The defendant accused the Judiciary Police (PJ) of putting his life at risk for allegedly sharing his identity with the Doyen investment fund in November 2015, directly targeting chief inspector Rogério Bravo, whose role in this case has already been investigated, and claimed that Doyen – who is an assistant in the process – even hired people to go after him in Hungary.
“Rogério Bravo made a deal with Nélio Lucas in November 2015. This deal presupposed an exchange of information: Nélio Lucas delivered Marclay’s report [empresa de cibersegurança contratada para investigar a intrusão informática] and the PJ delivered the name of the suspect – my name. And that’s what happened. On November 26, 2015, the PJ handed over my name to Nélio Lucas, putting my life at risk”, he said.
The defendant assumed he had a “perfect sense” of making statements that “quite contradict” what he said in the first judicial interrogation, and attributed this difference to the context experienced in early 2019, when he was arrested in Hungary, and to the difficulties he revealed he had past while he was detained on Hungarian soil.
The creator of the Football Leaks platform, who denied having been the author of computer sabotage to Sporting, one of the crimes for which he is facing trial, admitted that the Football Leaks project left his “life upside down”.
“The truth is that crime, even with good intentions, doesn’t pay. Knowing what I know today, I wouldn’t get involved in something like this again. My life is upside down, my family has suffered a lot and what I am saddened by the fact that everyone involved in the allegations… none of them was held in preventive detention”, he said.
Despite assuming that “mistakes were made” in the Football Leaks project, Rui Pinto emphasized the “great benefits” for society with the disclosure of “information that otherwise would not have been known”.
“Money was solving things and I was the only person who was deprived of liberty, I was deprived of liberty for a year and a half. There were several months in isolation, with only weekly contact with the family”, he said.
The creator of the platform that exposed many documents linked to Portuguese and international football clubs also recalled his collaboration with the authorities, namely the French authorities, without ceasing to criticize the main law firms, which he dubbed “architects of the biggest schemes of money laundering and tax fraud” and criticized the use of confidentiality between client and lawyer to protect against the commission of crimes.
“I understand that I cannot be the one to change things, I am not the one to change the world. It has to be the authorities. Despite this, I have not stopped trying to fight for transparency, even for collaboration with the authorities. The most decisive collaboration took place with the French authorities, who have systematically shown a great desire to count on my help”, he stressed.
At the same time, Rui Pinto also assumed his responsibility for obtaining information on the Luanda Leaks case, the contribution to the Ukrainian side in the war with Russia in a technological aspect, and rejected being the author of the blog “Mercado de Benfica”.
The next session of the trial, which began in September 2020, is scheduled for next Monday, but will only take place if there are any doubts or the lawyers want to consult documentation.
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled for January 4, 5 and 6 next year.
Rui Pinto, 33 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 witness protection at an undisclosed location and under police protection.
