The Portuguese Rui Pinto, author of the “Football Leaks” revelations on the underside of football business, was sentenced on Monday, September 11 by the Lisbon court. Nearly 90 charges had been brought against the 30-year-old, including the counts of “computer hacking”, “attempted extortion”, “violation of correspondence”, “data theft”.
Both accused and protected witness of his country’s justice system, Rui Pinto claims the role of whistleblower, nevertheless admitting before his judges having committed illegal computer intrusions to obtain millions of documents, which he started to be published 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 judicial inquiries in several countries.
From the publication of the salaries of Messi or Neymar to an accusation of rape against Cristiano Ronaldo, which has since been dismissed, including strategies to circumvent financial fair play at Manchester City or ethnic registration at Paris Saint-Germain, the planet football was deeply shaken by this gigantic leak of information. “I was outraged by what I discovered and decided to make it public,” Rui Pinto said at the opening of his trial in September 2020, adding that the “Football Leaks” were “ a cause for pride and not shame.”
Cooperation with authorities
In addition to 89 acts of computer hacking, the Portuguese was also tried for attempted extortion. According to the prosecution, he wanted to blackmail the boss of the Doyen Sports investment fund, his compatriot Nelio 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 sibling of Kazakh-Turkish oligarchs that put the Portuguese police on the trail of the self-taught “hacker”, originally from the Porto region.
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. At the end of his trial, he admitted to having obtained confidential information “illegitimately” with “a group of friends” whom he refused to identify.
The French authorities 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 Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos of having accumulated an immense fortune in a fraudulent manner .
Portuguese law does not allow him to benefit from whistleblower status, but his lawyers hoped that judges would take into account the public interest of his revelations when handing down their judgment. Reason for the last postponement of the date of the judgment, initially scheduled for last April, the 30-year-old hoped to benefit from an amnesty granted by the Portuguese government on the occasion of the visit of Pope Francis, at the beginning of August, to the World Youth Days of Lisbon.
Monday’s decision does not put an end to Rui Pinto’s 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.