This is a thread about some relevant details on the arrest and extradition of Rui Pinto, the Portuguese whistleblower behind Football Leaks.
Rui Pinto case started around Sept/Oct 2015, when Doyen Sports Investment Fund filed an extortion complaint against him. Doyen alleged that Mr. Pinto, Football Leaks promoter, asked for a large sum of money to not disclose inconvenient information for them.
Sporting CP, the most targeted club by FL in Portugal, also filed a complaint after the leakage of internal contracts and other confidential data.
We do not know whether Doyen's accusation is true or whether it's just a trap. The Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation in 2015 and more than three years later, until two months ago, nothing happened.
On March 2016, Rui Pinto was publicly linked for the first time to Football Leaks, by MARCA. However, Portuguese authorities continued to take no action on the matter: no house search, no arrest warrant, no request to testify.
On September 2018, SÁBADO linked Rui Pinto to a different case: the leaks about SL Benfica. Since 2017, SL Benfica has been under fire, after massive leaks that show evidences of corruption and match-fixing.
SL Benfica is innocent until proven guilty, but these leaks have already opened legal proceedings and the authorities classified the investigations as “of special complexity”, as they are dealing with “highly organized crime.”
But unlike what he did on Football Leaks, Rui Pinto has never assumed the authorship of Benfica leaks, so no one can assure that the origin of these two cases is the same. So far, this is just a remote possibility.
However, the mere and remote possibility of being involved in the scandal that fell on Benfica over the last two years was enough to put a target on Pinto in Portugal, a country where football, in general, has religious features and feeds extremist acts.
Quickly, belief in guiltiness became a manhunt. A major sector of the Portuguese press, also unmasked by the leaks and facing suspicions of promiscuity and corruption, is generally biased and concerted against Pinto.
Right now, a significant part of the country is waiting for the Portuguese whistleblower to return, to take revenge on something that, in fact, does not even know if really happened.
And let's take into account that Football Leaks has challenged national idol Cristiano Ronaldo divinity, both in the case of Kathryn Mayorga, and in the case of tax fraud in Spain.
On January 2018, the platform that had been targeting Benfica turned its weapons against PLMJ, one of the law firms responsible for Benfica’s legal team. But PLMJ is not only a lawyer for Benfica, it is one of the largest and most powerful and influent law firms in Portugal.
For instance, this office has participated in some of the biggest business deals carried out in Portugal and by the Portuguese State in recent years: privatization of EDP, REN, ANA, CTT, Caixa Seguros, TAP, BPN, ...
Some of these business deals are today under suspicion for being ruinous to public good.
PLMJ also took part as a law firm in huge corruption and espionage scandals that involved, for example, a former prime minister, gold visa concessions, ministers and politicians from both left and right wings, secret services and a Masonic Lodge.
So, State secret and compromising information for the elites who ruled the country in the recent decades were at risk of being subject to an imminent massive leak. This fact caused a silent but high alarm in Portugal.
Just one week after the PLMJ leaks started, Pinto was subjected to a European Arrest Warrant, which also seized all his computer devices, such as the external hard drives. Are these two cases connected? It seems pretty obvious to me… Let’s see.
It should be noted that formally the European arrest warrant was only about the Doyen case, which didn’t motivate any action from Portuguese authorities for more than three years: a dormant volcano that suddenly erupted. Why?
16 January 2018: The arrest of Rui Pinto in Budapest was celebrated in Portugal by almost all the mainstream media. The Criminal Police (PJ) scheduled an unprecedented press conference for the prime time.
Today we know that Pt authorities made serious mistakes in the European arrest warrant issuing, such was the rush to reach Pinto. Contrary to what European rules demand, there was no prior national warrant to justify the issuance of a EAW. Things had to be manipulated, and fast.
It is easy to reach a conclusion: until that week, Portuguese authorities didn’t want to arrest Rui Pinto, because if they did, a national warrant would have been issued previously. A strong will to capture Mr. Pinto began suddenly in mid-January.
And here a fundamental question arises: if the arrest is only related to an investigation of 2015, as they say, what does explain the hastiness of the Portuguese Public Prosecutor's Office in Jan 2018?
Pinto motivated the interest of the authorities only when the authorities themselves and the Portuguese establishment in general were at risk. This shows that he is not a hacker but a true whistleblower, possibly carrying information with indisputable relevance.
The sequence of events makes clear that Portugal is not trying to catch an extorter. Portugal is trying to catch and to mute a whistleblower, with significant information that we didn’t yet know.
Indeed, independently of being true or false, Doyen's alleged extortion seems to emerge as a pretext for Mr. Pinto arrest and for seizing material, in an investigation that previously had never justified a house search or even a call.
Let me be clear about what I think: if at any moment, anytime, anywhere, Rui Pinto committed any crime, regardless of the nature of that crime, that had nothing to do with the achievement of information of public interest and high value, he has to answer in court for it.
But if the Portuguese authorities are resorting to old tactics and trying to capture Rui Pinto because of what he knows and not because of what he did, then we all have the obligation to be by his side and say clearly and loud: free Rui Pinto.
*january 2019
*january 2019
