Source of the “Football Leaks” revelations on the underside of football business, the Portuguese Rui Pinto was convicted on Monday by the Lisbon court for computer hacking and attempted extortion against a sports investment fund, receiving a sentence suspended by four years in prison.
Both accused and protected witness of his country’s justice system, the 34-year-old young man claimed the role of whistleblower, but admitted before his judges to having committed illegal computer intrusions to obtain millions of documents that he began publishing directly on the internet at the end of 2015.
Transmitted to a consortium of European investigative media, this windfall of information brought to light questionable practices involving star players, clubs and agents, which were then the subject of tax adjustments and legal inquiries in several countries.
From the salaries of Lionel Messi or Neymar to an accusation of rape against Cristiano Ronaldo, which has since been dismissed, including Manchester City’s financial fair play circumvention strategies or ethnic registration at Paris Saint-Germain, the football planet was deeply shaken by this gigantic leak of information.
“I was outraged by what I discovered and I decided to make it public,” Rui Pinto declared at the opening of his trial in September 2020, adding that the “Football Leaks” were “ a cause for pride and not shame.”
The president of the Lisbon court, Margarida Alves, however, considered on Monday that “the freedom to inform does not justify the violation of private life.”
“This decision recognizes that there was a public service,” noted Rui Pinto’s lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, leaving the court, welcoming the fact that his client escaped prison.
Regarding the accusation of attempted extortion, “the court had no doubt. (…) It was clearly established that he (Rui Pinto, editor’s note) wanted to receive money”, said Judge Margarida Alves.
According to the prosecution, the Portuguese wanted to blackmail the boss of Doyen Sports, his compatriot Nélio Lucas, by demanding between 500,000 and one million euros to stop publishing compromising documents.
It was a complaint from this investment fund based in Malta and controlled by a family of Kazakh-Turkish oligarchs which put the Portuguese police on the trail of the self-taught “hacker”, originally from the Porto region (north).
During his trial, Rui Pinto regretted having made “a huge mistake”, ensuring that he had never intended to follow through with his blackmail.
“Essentially, the facts described (in the indictment, editor’s note) were considered proven,” said Margarida Alves while reading the judgment which, moreover, sentenced Rui Pinto to pay a total of 22,000 euros to compensate his victims.
While he was responsible for a total of 89 computer crimes, Rui Pinto was convicted of five counts of “illegitimate access” to computer systems and three counts of “aggravated correspondence violation”, she said in specifying that he had partially benefited from the amnesty granted by the Portuguese government on the occasion of the visit of Pope Francis at the beginning of August during World Youth Day in Lisbon.
With a surgical mask on his face and his usual look — brushed hair, dark blue shirt, jeans and sneakers — Rui Pinto appeared free. However, the decision handed down on Monday will not end his troubles with Portuguese justice, the prosecution having recently drawn up a new indictment accusing him of 377 new computer crimes that he allegedly committed between 2016 and 2019 against some 70 people, companies or institutions.
Arrested in January 2019 in Hungary, where he lived, then extradited to his country, Rui Pinto spent more than a year in pre-trial detention before agreeing to cooperate with the authorities in other cases, allowing them access to the encrypted data he had in his possession.
France also requested the collaboration of the Portuguese, who is also at the origin of the “Luanda Leaks”, an investigation published in January 2020 accusing the businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos , of having accumulated an immense fortune fraudulently during the reign of his father.
09/12/2023 00:10:41 – Lisbon (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
