PLMJ lawyers contest public interest in Rui Pinto’s revelations

Pressed by Rui Pinto’s defense if the document was linked to a decree by former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, the lawyer shielded himself from professional secrecy.

The public interest in the documents and information exposed by Rui Pinto on the Internet was challenged today by lawyers linked to PLMJ, at the 18th session of the “Football Leaks” trial.

At the hearing held today at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, lawyer Diogo Campos, specialized in Public and Administrative Law and who saw his mailbox at the PLMJ office being allegedly accessed by the creator of the electronic platform, stressed that he had never had a related case. with football.

“I have nothing that could be of interest to the public on my computer,” said the lawyer, who admitted making professional and personal use of the equipment, of which he recognized only the disclosure of a document that could be in the respective system. “I have my whole life there,” he said, while highlighting the “wantonness and intrusion into private life” and equating the situation with an assault on his own home.

However, Diogo Campos refused to answer in court about possible connections to the “Luanda Leaks” case, which exposed in January 2020 alleged financial schemes by businesswoman Isabel dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, which would have allowed them to withdraw money from the treasury Angolan public through tax havens.

Pressed by Rui Pinto’s defense if the document was linked to a decree by former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, the lawyer shielded himself from professional secrecy. “I cannot identify whether they are or were my clients. I will never violate professional secrecy,” he said.

The lawyer José Ricardo Gonçalves, who was at PLMJ between 2009 and 2018 and is also an arbitrator at the Arbitration Court for Sport (TAD), summarized the issue of intrusion into that society’s computer system noting that “there is no justification for having access without direct authorization or indirect “.

A document analyzed in the audience room by the lawyer, at the request of the Public Ministry (MP), and which came to be revealed on the blog “Mercado de Benfica” was a statement related to Gelson Martins, which the causidico acknowledged having been “drafted by him” “and that” has no public interest “, in addition to the parties involved in this document having defined its confidentiality.

“Confidentiality does not make it impossible if someone wants to know. There are mechanisms to raise this confidentiality, but it is before the courts”, underlined José Ricardo Gonçalves, who also confirmed having collaborated with the team led by lawyer João Medeiros and who was at the end of 2018 a of the defense faces of Benfica’s SAD in the “E-toupeira” case.

Before these testimonies, there was also a deposition by videoconference from Miguel Reis, a member of the board of directors and responsible for supervising the tax area of ​​that law firm. According to the lawyer, there was a document that contained his name and that “was published in” Luanda Leaks “”.

Questioned by Rui Pinto’s defense on the connection to the company Supreme Treasure, Lda, of which he became one of the partners and who was involved in 2016 in the acquisition of Casa Manoel de Oliveira – then announced as the new headquarters of the Sindika Dokolo Foundation for the Europe -, Miguel Reis clarified that he was no longer connected to that company at the time of the deal and said he did not know if Mário Leite da Silva, Isabel dos Santos’ representative, was the manager.

“This partnership was more years ago, it was mine and that of a colleague and it was used for a public tender for the purchase of the Manoel de Oliveira house when he was no longer a partner”, he sentenced.

At the same time, four secretaries who worked at PLMJ between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 were also heard, with all of them converging in their ignorance of the reasons why the respective computers were accessed. Isabel Mascarenhas, who has already stopped working in society, even assumed that she was only hearing in court today that her computer was allegedly accessed by Rui Pinto.

The trial continues on Thursday from 9:30 am with the hearings of coaches Filipe Celikkaya and Paulo Henriques, lawyers Pedro Rosa, Maria Diogo Tavares, Manuel Rocha, António Moreira, Francisco Martins, Maria João Mata, secretary Sónia Pacheco and the responsible for the security of information technologies at PLMJ Jordão Palma.

Rui Pinto, 31, is responsible for a total of 90 crimes: 68 of undue access, 14 of violation of correspondence, six of illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, the PLMJ law firm, the Portuguese Federation of Football (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and also for computer sabotage to Sporting’s SAD and for extortion, in the attempted form. This last crime concerns Doyen and was also what led to the pronunciation of the lawyer Aníbal Pinto.

The creator of Football Leaks has been free since August 7, “due to his collaboration” with the Judiciary Police (PJ) and his “critical sense”, but for security reasons, he is part of the protection program of witnesses in an undisclosed location and under police protection.