“Justice at last”: Rui Pinto on Football Leaks acquittal | OneFootball

Rui Pinto claims that, over the course of seven years, he was the “victim of arbitrariness by a faction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office” and criticizes the way the prosecution acted, arguing that it was marked by an excessive desire to punish.

When the ruling was read out at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, the court deemed the Public Prosecutor’s indictment invalid and accused the prosecutors of “the kind of persecution typical of a police state”.

In the second trial related to the ‘Football Leaks’ case, which began on January 13, 2025, Rui Pinto faced a total of 241 charges (201 counts of aggravated unauthorized access, 22 counts of aggravated violation of correspondence, and 18 counts of computer damage), linked to access to emails from Benfica and other entities, such as the clubs’ league, law firms, judges, prosecutors, the Tax Authority, and the National Internal Security Network.

Rui Pinto had been convicted in the first ‘Football Leaks’ case, in September 2023, to a four-year suspended sentence for attempted extortion, aggravated violation of correspondence, and unauthorized access.

In November 2023, he was also sentenced to six months in prison in France, also suspended, for illegally accessing Paris Saint-Germain emails.

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