LISBON (Reuters) – Police on Friday maintained barriers against the crowd in a Lisbon court before the trial of Rui Pinto, whose online page Football Leaks published a large number of documents exposing the transactions of millions of European football clubs.
The 31-year-old former history student must be tried at 9:30 am (8:30 am GMT) at the Central Criminal Court of the Portuguese capital on 90 charges, adding unauthorized access to data, correspondence violation and attempted extortion..
Pinto stated that he had published all 70 million documents, but said he was a whistleblower acting in the public interest.
Football Leaks’ knowledge showed how some of football’s richest and most vital personalities have strayed from taxes by channeling their source of income abroad and providing information about the other wealthy Gulf people and organizations that have become influential in the sport.
He also looked at the massive sums of cash circulating in the big clubs and the asymmetrical one in which the government enforces the rules.
The documents provided some of the evidence that led to a ban, since it was cancelled, from Manchester City of the English Premier League of the European Champions League for alleged violations of monetary fair play rules.
Pinto was arrested in Hungary in January 2019, then released from space arrest and is now under witness protection.
“The fight continues because almost two years later, Portugal remains a paradise for wonderful corruption and money laundering,” Pinto wrote recently on Twitter.
The trial is expected to last until December and come with the testimony of forty-five witnesses, adding fugitive Edward Snowden, a fugitive from American intelligence, as a defenseman.
In January, Pinto said he was also guilty of leaking thousands of files on alleged monetary schemes used through the Angolan billionaire and former first daughter Isabel dos Santos to build a business empire.
Angola has opened investigations by criminals, but dos Santos has denied misunderstood.
Reporting through Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira; Edited by Andrew Cawthorne
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