Beaten on pitch and in court: Benfica appeal Rui Pinto acquittal | OneFootball

Beaten on pitch and in court: Benfica appeal Rui Pinto acquittal | OneFootball

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·13 May 2026

Beaten on pitch and in court: Benfica appeal Rui Pinto acquittal

Article image:Beaten on pitch and in court: Benfica appeal Rui Pinto acquittal

Benfica will appeal the court ruling that, at first instance, acquitted Rui Pinto in the Football Leaks case, CNN Portugal reports.

The club chaired by Rui Costa thus joins the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which had already announced its intention to challenge and try to overturn, at the Lisbon Court of Appeal, the judgment that cleared the hacker of all the crimes he was accused of — among them unlawful access through computer intrusion into the email accounts of senior officials at the club from Luz.


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It is worth recalling that the court of first instance considered the indictment invalid and unfounded with regard to the 241 crimes attributed to Rui Pinto.

Rui Pinto faced dozens of charges of aggravated unlawful access, aggravated violation of correspondence, and computer damage. At issue was the alleged access to Benfica emails and documents, as well as those of FC Porto, the Football League, the Tax Authority, and the National Internal Security Network, among other targets.

Rui Pinto was convicted in the Football Leaks case in September 2023 by Lisbon’s Central Criminal Court and sentenced to four years in prison, suspended, for similar crimes.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.

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