Football leaks informant Rui Pinto, who has been charged with attempted extortion and cybercrime, has been released from custody in Portugal. This was announced by his lawyers. Pinto has been in custody for over a year.
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According to his lawyers’ press release, Pinto must now remain in house arrest. He was not allowed to have Internet access there. “Rui Pinto’s defense welcomes this decision and trusts that further steps will be taken for the freedom of her client,” it said. Pinto’s Football Leaks revelations have already done much to combat white-collar crime.
Pinto was arrested in Budapest in January 2019 and then brought to Portugal. He has to face charges in court that he committed 90 crimes. The head of the leakage platform Football Leaks is accused of attempted extortion, cybercrime and the breach of letter secrecy.
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Pinto’s defense lawyers describe her client as a whistleblower who has acted in the common good and at a high personal risk. However, the investigating judge expressed doubts about this in January. She didn’t think he was a whistleblower because he wasn’t an employee of a company whose data was leaked. In addition, the accusation of blackmail against him is not good intent.
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Rui Pinto had given SPIEGEL and the research network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) 3.4 terabytes of data over the course of several years. With the help of the documents, journalists across Europe have published more than 1,000 articles that uncovered criminal offenses and breaches of the rules in professional football. The revelations resulted in police raids in several countries, tax audits, association sanctions and the conviction of soccer stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho.
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