A three-year court case has ended with the hacker / whistle-blower owner of the “Football Leaks” website being handed a 4-year suspended sentence.
Rui Pinto, a Portuguese citizen was given the sentence in a Lisbon court on Monday 11th September with the judge commenting that “The court decided Rui Pinto will be handed a single four-year sentence… but there is no need to serve the sentence in prison. The court hopes that the regret the defendant has shown in court is serious and that from now on he refrains from performing acts as described here.”
Pinto was arrested in Hungary in 2019 and was placed under house arrest as investigations began. Shortly after that, he was extradited to Portugal where he spent a year in prison before agreeing to cooperate with the Portuguese authorities on other cases, giving them access to encrypted documents he had obtained — making him both a defendant and a protected witness in Portugal.
The trial began in September 2020 with Pinto facing 90 charges including unauthorised access to data, violation of correspondence, and attempted extortion.
A total of 77 counts of improper access and breach of correspondence were pardoned under an amnesty that was announced by the Portuguese government in June for some young people.
Football Leaks
Pinto started the Football Leaks website in 2015 and over the following three years he shared 18.6 million documents on the internet and with a consortium of European newspapers, which published details which rocked the football world.
Some of the leaks posted to his website included:
- The salaries of Lionel Messi and Neyma
- An accusation of rape against Cristiano Ronaldo
- Alleged financial misconduct at Manchester City
- Ethnic profiling at Paris Saint Germain
- Undercover talks regarding the creation of the European Super League
- Alleged cases of tax evasion by several top footballers
Using the online pseudonym “John”, Pinto classed himself as a whistle-blower working to uncover the scandals rampant within the football industry at all levels.
In court, Pinto argued that he was a whistle-blower and not a hacker and that his actions were in the public interest in order to expose corruption in football, which his lawyer said the ruling on Monday recognises.
However, the judge disagreed and said that “The freedom to inform does not justify violations of privacy.”
The judge also added: “The court has no doubt… It has clearly been established that he was hoping to get money.” after prosecutors alleged that Pinto sought between €500,000 and €1M from the head of Doyen Sports, Nelio Lucas, in order to stop publishing compromising documents.
French authorities have sought cooperation from Pintoover the “Luanda Leaks”, which were a release of 715,000 documents providing compromising information on Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Dos Santos, once the richest woman in Africa, has faced several court cases on charges she siphoned billions of dollars from Angolan state companies during her father’s four decades in office.
In July, an international arbitration court ordered Dos Santos to return her shares in Portugal’s Galp energy company to Angola. The shares are estimated to be worth approx. €400M
