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Inspector José Amador, of the Judicial Police, admitted that when he went to look for Rui Pinto in Budapest in March 2019, he received the bag of evidence and signed the respective list of assets without opening it and reviewing its contents.
In court he defended that he acted with “pragmatism” and that if a similar operation were carried out in Portugal “under other conditions there would be the possibility of opening, reviewing and resealing.
Upon receiving this evidence, the inspector brought 24 evidence to Lisbon instead of the 26 seized during Rui Pinto’s arrest. But, in addition to missing 2 items (papers and USB cables), all the other 24 items had their seals broken.
In court, the inspector reported that the information received from Budapest was that in March the Hungarian investigating police went to the police station to seek the evidence for analysis, following a request for information and cooperation from the French authorities.
José Amador defended that the material, although opened in Budapest, was not manipulated, since the digital records made in Lisbon are similar to those in Budapest. In addition, José Amador argued, the fact that nine discs encrypted with the passwords provided by Rui Pinto were subsequently opened shows that these discs and their files were not corrupted when the Hungarian authorities opened them.
Although the inspector ruled out the possibility that the content of the discs was tampered with, Judge Margarida Alves pointed out that the concerns of Rui Pinto’s defense about what happened in Budapest were legitimate. “From the moment that things are not done according to the rules, a whole world of doubts is opened,” said the magistrate.
The testimony of José Amador, a witness cited by the Public Ministry, will continue during the afternoon.
