[ad_1]
After granting the Portuguese authorities the information contained in the encrypted hard drives, the French Justice also wants to have access to the passwords Rui Pinto to get to the source of information collected by the complainant.
The request was made this week by the Parquet National Financier (PNF), a department that is part of the French prosecutor’s office and is responsible for investigating economic and financial crimes. In the letter sent to the Central Criminal Investigation Court cited by the Quick, the French authorities reveal their intention to formalize a request for cooperation with the Portuguese counterparts, a request that will be executed shortly.
Contacted by the PUBLIC, French lawyer William Bourdon reiterates Rui Pinto’s willingness to collaborate with the French authorities and Eurojust, as he had always said publicly after his arrest in Budapest.
France wants to have access to the information as soon as possible, so that investigators can analyze the documents and analyze the suspicions that the millions of files in the possession of Rui Pinto may raise.
Before being extradited to Portugal, Rui Pinto had already had several contacts with the French authorities, allowing them even to make a copy of this data, which, for more than a year, was encrypted and out of the reach of the Judicial Police. In the forensic analysis report that appears in the case where he is tried for 90 crimes, the police admit their powerlessness over the encryption system used by the hacker, even praising Rui Pinto’s computer skills. The complainant allowed this copy for fear of data security in Portugal.
Gaiense, 31, was still on the verge of having integrated a witness protection program in France, a regime in which he is currently in Portugal, but the European arrest warrant prevented this protection from the French authorities.
The hacker is being prosecuted for 90 crimes: one crime of attempted extortion, six of illegitimate access, 68 of improper access, 14 of violation of correspondence and one of computer sabotage. Rui Pinto had been accused by the Public Ministry of 147 crimes, a figure that was reduced during the investigation stage. The trial began on September 4.
Rui Pinto was in preventive prison for 13 months. From March 22, 2019 to April 8, 2020, he remained in a prison cell attached to the Judicial Police headquarters in Lisbon. After entering into a collaboration agreement with the Portuguese authorities, he was transferred to house arrest and subsequently released in August, currently in a safe house, in an uncertain location.
