“There are double standards,” Ana Gomes told Lusa, considering the position of those in the Portuguese judicial system who do not want to know about the fight, which is public service, on the part of a whistle-blower who exposes organised crime is completely obsolete.
Rui Pinto, the creator of Football Leaks, a platform where several secret documents concerning transfers and players’ contracts have been published, will stand trial for 90 crimes of illegitimate access, improper access, violation of correspondence, computer sabotage and attempted extortion.
The Portuguese hacker is on trial in Portugal for illegal access to documents, but Portuguese justice has already agreed to collaborate with its Angolan counterpart, using documentation collected by Pinto to accuse the businesswoman Isabel dos Santos of mismanagement of public money.
Pinto’s lawyers said in a press release that their client is the source of the documents that gave rise to Luanda Leaks, an international journalistic investigation that aimed at the enrichment of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, and that motivated the Angolan justice system to take action against the businesswoman, accused of mismanagement and embezzlement when she was an administrator of the state oil company Sonangol.
“The undersigned lawyers declare that their client, Mr Rui Pinto, assumes responsibility for having delivered, at the end of 2018, to the Platform for the Protection of Whistle-blowers in Africa (PPLAAF), a hard drive containing all data related to the recent revelations about the fortune of Isabel dos Santos, her family and all individuals who may be involved in the fraudulent operations committed at the expense of the Angolan state and, eventually, other foreign countries,” a note by William Bourdon and Francisco Teixeira da Mota said.
Rui Pinto “is a whistle-blower and must have whistle-blower status for the Portuguese authorities,” Ana Gomes said, considering that the hacker must be used by the Portuguese justice system to combat corruption and organised crime, money laundering, terrorist financing and other related crime.