Decision on Rui Pinto’s future rescheduled for July 13

The reading of the judgment of the process in which Rui Pinto, assumed mentor of Football Leaks, is responsible for 90 crimes was, this Friday, rescheduled for July 13, 2023, at 2 pm.

The communication of the decision was scheduled for 10 am, at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon. But, as the collective of judges had already warned that it could happen, a non-substantial change of facts was decided.

The changes were communicated in writing, during the session, to all parties in the process, their content being unknown for the time being. At issue will be corrections to the pronunciation (accusation after the instruction phase), which, despite not affecting the essence of the process, must be subject to adversarial proceedings.

At the request of the defenses, the court gave ten days to the defendants to comment on the decision, scheduling for May 26 any further steps of proof. If these are not requested, this hearing will not take place.

On leaving court, the lawyer for the self-styled whistleblower hacker, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, considered that “it is predictable that there will be a conviction”. In the final allegations of the trial, in January 2023, the lawyer had already defended the conviction of Rui Pinto to a suspended sentence, since he partially confessed to the facts.

The Football Leaks mentor is responsible for 89 computer crimes related to access, between 2015 and 2019, to the computer systems of the investment fund Doyen Sports, Sporting, the Portuguese Football Federation, the Attorney General’s Office and the law firm PLMJ. Rui Pinto, 34 years old, is still accused of having tried to extort, in 2015, Doyen Sports, in co-authorship with the lawyer Aníbal Pinto, who responds solely for this crime, denied by both.

The trial began in September 2020.