Sporting surprised by the outcome of E-Tupeyra, which “tarnished” Portuguese football

This Friday, Sporting were surprised by the outcome of the E-Toupeira trial despite the conviction of a former Benfica legal adviser, warning that the case is another one that threatens the reputation of Portuguese football.

Thursday’s E-mole ruling assessed the “criminal determination” of former Benfica legal adviser Paulo Goncalves and court official José Augusto Silva to convict two defendants for corruption, acquitting only the third defendant, Julio Loureiro.

“Sporting Clube de Portugal – Futebol SAD is surprised that the court found it plausible that this sports agent, despite being the “predominant element that provoked the whole sequence of crimes”, did not disclose anything about his actions and the results of his efforts .to the then president of SLB SAD, Luis Filipe Vieira, neither to his vice-presidents nor to the administration”, can be read in the lions’ communiqué on the official website.

Paulo Gonçalves has been sentenced to two years and six months in prison with a suspended sentence for a corruption offense, but for Sporting this trial is yet another one that casts a shadow over the national sport.

“This is one of several processes whose serious contours call into question the functioning and reputation of Portuguese football and the sporting truth of our competitions: influence peddling, corruption, the delivery of suitcases of money, active players who claim to have been seduced – a number of dubious businesses and criminal practices that have tarnished the national sport,” it says.

At the same time, Sporting recalled the trial of Apito Dourado, in which justice “failed” in a crime that “did not receive the punishment it deserved”.

“Justice did not take place in the so-called Golden Whistle trial. It is important that this time everything does not remain the same, that the actors pretend that nothing happened, that there are no wiretaps on the Internet, that the crime was punished. did not pay off. And crime cannot pay off, because the idea that crime pays off completely undermines citizens’ trust in institutions,” he said.

Finally, he talked about what was done in Italy in the Juventus case, which led to the fall of the Turin club.

“In this and other cases, let’s refer to what is being done abroad, as in the case of the Italian case that led Juventus to relegation,” he concluded.

Paulo Gonçalves, former legal adviser to the Benfica SAD, was charged with six crimes of breach of secrecy of justice, 21 of breach of secrecy by an employee, nine of improper access, nine of breach of duty of secrecy, of complicity. – authorship, in addition to one crime of active corruption, two crimes of unauthorized access and two violations of the duty of secrecy, being punished only for the crime of active corruption.

José Augusto Silva was convicted of one crime of passive corruption, six for breach of secrecy of justice, nine for unauthorized access, nine for breach of duty of secrecy, 28 for illegal access and one for embezzlement, while the court no longer separated. out of a total of 21 crimes of breach of secrecy per employee. In turn, Julio Loureiro was acquitted of the crime of passive corruption.

The E-mole case dates back to 2018, when a deputy accused former Benfica legal adviser Paulo Gonçalves, court officials José Augusta Silva and Julio Loureiro, and Benfica’s SAD of various crimes. However, in December of that year, the training decision ended with the “embodied” SAD not being brought to trial.