Football leaks hacker accuses police of risking his life
The hacker accused Portugal's criminal investigation police agency of putting his life at risk for allegedly sharing his identity with the Doyen investment fund in 2015.
Rui Pinto accused Portugal’s criminal investigation police agency, PJ, in court on Monday of putting his life at risk for allegedly sharing his identity with the Doyen investment fund in November 2015.
In today’s trial session of the Football Leaks case at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, the creator of the electronic platform directly targeted chief inspector Rogério Bravo, whose actions, in this case, have already come under investigation, and claimed that Doyen – which is an assistant in the case – even hired people to go after him in Hungary.
“Rogério Bravo made a deal with Nélio Lucas in November 2015. That business presupposed an exchange of information: Nélio Lucas would deliver the Marclay report [the cybersecurity company hired to investigate the computer intrusion], and the PJ would deliver the suspect’s name – my name. And that’s what happened. On November 26, 2015, the PJ gave my name to Nélio Lucas, putting my life at risk,” he said.
According to Rui Pinto, who is giving statements to the panel of judges for the third consecutive session, Doyen was still hesitant to give this information to the Portuguese authorities but would have preferred to obtain the information on the identity of the person responsible for the computer intrusion.
“Doyen Capital and the Efendi family, at the time, feared reputational damage if it was publicly disclosed that they had been the target of illegitimate access. They weighed up the pros and cons and agreed to hand over that information because the suspect’s name was more valuable. They hired people in Hungary to get to me”, he stressed, continuing: “They were still undecided about the usefulness of the PJ because they wanted to solve the case by their own means”.
Rui Pinto, 34, has been charged with a total of 90 offences: 68 for unauthorised access, 14 for violation of correspondence, and six for illegitimate access, targeting entities such as Sporting, Doyen, the law firm PLMJ, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), as well as computer sabotage of the Sporting SAD and extortion, in the attempted form. The latter crime concerns Doyen and was what also led to the indictment of the lawyer Aníbal Pinto.
The creator of Football Leaks has been free since August 7, 2020 “due to his cooperation” with the Judicial Police (PJ) but is, for security reasons, inserted in the witness protection programme in an undisclosed location and under police protection.
