It is not yet this Friday that the sentence of the process will be known Football Leaks, a court case in which Rui Pinto is responsible for 90 crimes. A non-substantial alteration of the facts described in the indictment, made by the panel of judges in charge of the trial, led to the postponement of the decision to the next 13th of July.
At stake is “the testimony of the defendants and witnesses”, explained Margarida Alves, chief judge in the case. In the dispatch, to which PÚBLICO had access, the dates and times of several of the computer accesses attributed to Rui Pinto are mostly corrected. It is also said in the order that the hacker “was well aware that he was forbidden access to the computer system shared by Doyen” and the awareness that the communications he accessed “contained personal data of third parties” and “were reserved for a limited number of people”.
“Let’s read it calmly, we have ten days to give our opinion”, began by saying Francisco Teixeira da Mota, Rui Pinto’s lawyer, on his way out of court. Admitting that he only had time to “read aloud” the order presented in the courtroom, the lawyer asked for time to analyze what is at stake. “It is predictable that there could be a conviction,” he admitted.
There are about ten pages of order that can bring changes to the process and a possible conviction. Rui Pinto is currently accused of committing 90 crimes, answering for one of attempted extortion, six of illegitimate access, 68 of improper access, 14 of violation of correspondence and one of computer sabotage.
The second defendant in this case, lawyer Aníbal Pinto, is accused of attempted extortion.
After being in custody between March 2019 and April 2020, Rui Pinto began collaborating with the Judiciária, giving access to the files that were on the encrypted discs seized in Hungary. The whistleblower is now in an undisclosed location, assisting this police in the investigations.
After having improperly accessed the servers of the investment fund Doyen, linked to the world of football, the hacker asked the company for an amount between 500 thousand and one million euros, guaranteeing that, if the amount were transferred, the secret documentation removed from the servers would not be published on the page Football Leaks.
Before the trial, Rui Pinto vehemently repeated that these messages only served to understand whether the information in his possession was actually valuable to Doyen, having assured that he never intended to receive a cent from the investment fund based in Malta.
After the appearance of emails exchanged with the former lawyer, the also accused Aníbal Pinto, in which he considered the best way to pay as little taxes as possible on the amount that Doyen was going to pay him, the young man admitted that, at a certain point, he considered receiving the ransom. He also acknowledged that his actions – even if unintentionally – could amount to extortion.
2023-04-28 09:23:10
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