The Portuguese case against Rui Pinto

Football Leaks hacker Rui Pinto managed to hack the investigation in which he was the target, new court documents reveal.

By Nuno Tiago Pinto

READ ALSO: Dirty John: The dark side of Rui Pinto

When the Portuguese authorities began to analyse the hard drives and laptops seized from Rui Pinto in Budapest in early January this year, they knew they had a difficult task. Not only because the amount of data gathered inside the devices was huge, almost 12 terabytes of information, but mostly because it was highly encrypted. And the man behind Football Leaks, sent to pre-trial detention after his interrogation by a judge, had no intention to give them the necessary passwords.

The process began almost immediately after Rui Pinto arrival in Portugal on 21 March. Inside those devices, the investigators were hoping to find evidence linking the man behind Football Leaks to the case that was the basis of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by the Public Attorney from the Departamento Central de Investigação Penal (DCIAP): the hacking of Sporting Club de Portugal and Doyen Sports Investments Limited servers and the extortion attempt of Nélio Lucas, then Doyen’s CEO. They also knew that they would probably find thousands of documents not related to the EAW. What they didn’t expect was to find strong evidence that Rui Pinto had hacked the emails of the most important members of the Portuguese judicial system, including communications between Joana Marques Vidal, the former Attorney General, and Amadeu Guerra, the previous head of DCIAP, the department that investigates the most complex cases in Portugal, including terrorism, money laundering and corruption.

Acco...

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