The Public Ministry (MP) requested this Wednesday the imprisonment of Rui Pinto, creator of the electronic platform Football Leaks, for 89 of the 90 crimes charged against him in the process.
In the final allegations of the Football Leaks process, initiated on September 4, 2020, Marta Viegas, prosecutor of the Public Ministry (MP), considered that the only unproven crime was computer sabotage of Sporting’s SAD.
In the deputy’s opinion, Rui Pinto’s illegitimate access to the email accounts of Sporting employees, including Bruno de Carvalho, former president, and Jorge Jesus, former coach of the soccer team, “were not the reason for the fall of the system, which was already below”.
In declarations to the journalists, in the outskirts of the Campus of Justice, in Lisbon, the lawyer Aníbal Pinto defended that Rui Pinto “will be acquitted of the crime of attempted extortion”. “I regret that the prosecutor has not been careful to respond to Rui Pinto’s withdrawal,” he said.
“The actions of the defendant then did not have the effect expressed in the accusation,” said Marta Viegas, I understand that, for this reason, the crime of computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD was not proven, as indicated in the accusation.
Marta Viegas also considered it proven that the other defendant in the case, the lawyer Aníbal Pinto, should be sentenced for the crime of attempted extortion, for which he is accused.
Rui Pinto, 34, is responsible for a total of 90 crimes: 68 for improper access, 14 for violation of correspondence, six for illegitimate access, directed at entities such as Sporting, Doyen, the PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Federation de Fútbol (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), as well as computer sabotage against Sporting’s SAD and extortion, in the form of an attempt. This last crime concerns Doyen and was the one that also motivated the pronunciation of the lawyer Aníbal Pinto.
* News updated at 12:35 pm.
Source: TSF
