‘Football Leaks’ hacker trial verdict delayed until July

The verdict in the trial of “Football Leaks” hacker Rui Pinto, due on Friday, has been postponed until July 13, a Lisbon court announced.

The hearing was suspended to give Pinto’s defence lawyers more time to read and respond to changes in the description of the charges against him, according to the presiding judge, Margarida Alves.

“It is a technical matter,” Pinto’s lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, said on leaving the court.

Without going into details, he acknowledged that the decision by the court to amend the accusations was unlikely to be something that favoured his client.

“This makes a conviction foreseeable,” he said.

Pinto is being tried for 89 hacking offences whose victims included top Portuguese football club Sporting, investment fund Doyen Sports, the Portuguese Football Federation, a law firm and even magistrates of the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The 34-year-old is also charged with attempted extortion, a crime punishable by between two and 10 years in prison.

The trial started in September 2020.

Portuguese law does not allow Pinto whistleblower status, but his lawyers had hoped the judges would take into account the public interest of his revelations when reaching their verdict.

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Pinto’s “Football Leaks” trove contains some 18.6 million documents, which he began posting on the internet in 2015. Germany’s Spiegel and other European outlets then acquired some documents and published details. Pinto continued hacking and leaking documents for several years.

The leaks sparked criminal investigations in Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Switzerland.

Pinto also says he is behind the “Luanda Leaks”, a release of 715,000 compromising documents that focus on Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.