Public prosecutors appeal decision clearing Rui Pinto | OneFootball

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has decided to appeal the decision that acquitted Rui Pinto in the second Football Leaks case, linked to the unlawful access to emails from Benfica and other organizations, a source from the Attorney General’s Office confirmed to Lusa this Thursday.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office’s position came a day after the panel of judges deemed the indictment “invalid” and, therefore, “unfounded.”

The court also held that, in this case, the defendant was treated “in three different ways” and without respect for his “dignity as a human person.”

The unanimous decision by the panel of judges, led by Tânia Loureiro Gomes, argues that the interpretation given by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, at different times and in different procedural contexts, to Article 30 of the Code of Criminal Procedure violated rules of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to the ruling, what is at issue are violations of the “absolute principles of human dignity,” the democratic rule of law, and “the fundamental right to effective judicial protection,” particularly regarding the right to a decision within a reasonable time and through a fair trial.

The panel of judges also considered that the defendant’s procedural framing and the “successive imputations, at different procedural moments, of acts constituting various crimes, amount to a violation of the constitutional guarantee and principle prohibiting double jeopardy, a guarantee and principle that is also binding under International Law and in force in the Portuguese legal system.”

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

The creator of Football Leaks was committed for trial in March 2024, with the Central Criminal Investigation Court granting amnesty for 134 counts of violation of correspondence under the amnesty law approved in 2023 following World Youth Day, since the acts attributed to him were allegedly committed before he turned 30.

Rui Pinto was convicted in the first Football Leaks case in September 2023 and given a four-year suspended sentence for attempted extortion, aggravated violation of correspondence, and unlawful access.

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

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