Email case: Supreme Court upholds conviction of FC Porto and Francisco J. Marques

The Supreme Court of Justice upheld the Lisbon Court’s decision to condemn FC Porto, SAD Porto, FCP Media, Avenida dos Aliados – Sociedade de Comunicação and Francisco J. Marquesto the payment of compensation to Benfica and Benfica’s SAD, in the case of the disclosure of the eagles’ emails, but decrees a new quantification of the value.

At issue is the case of appropriation and disclosure of a vast set of emails originating from Benfica email, which contained confidential and confidential information.

“Regarding the compensation, in the amount of 1,000,000 euros, to be paid to the club and Benfica’s SAD due to reputational damage, the Supreme Court changed the Appeal’s decision, relegating the completion of the monetary amount to later settlement, given the insufficiency of the available elements”, can be read in a statement to which SIC Notícias had access.

In other words, a new value will be defined later for the compensation to be paid to the Eagles club.

In the statement, the Supreme Court also said that the acquittal of the then president of FC Porto, Pinto da Costa, and administrators Santos Gomes and Melo Caldeira was upheld.

“The ruling highlighted in its reasoning that the defendants were ordered to compensate the authors for the illicit action they carried out, with disregard for the right to secrecy of correspondence, exposing the authors’ business secrets, with the purpose of obtaining an advantage in the competing activity, causing damage of various categories”, the statement read.

In June 2023, FC Porto’s communications director was sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months in prison, for aggravated breach of correspondence and offense against a legal entity. In the same process, Diogo Faria, content director at Porto Canal, was sentenced to nine months in prison, with the sentence suspended for a year, for violating correspondence.

In September, Benfica appealed the decision, given the partial acquittal of the FC Porto directors, arguing that Francisco J. Marques and Diogo Faria should be “convicted for all the crimes of which they were accused and pronounced”, while the defendants appealed, contesting the legitimacy of Benfica filing a complaint.

In January of this year, the Lisbon Court of Appeal aggravated the sentences of Francisco J. Marques and Diogo Faria. The sentence imposed on Porto’s communications director increased to two years, while that of Porto Canal’s content director increased to one year and five months.

O case of disclosure of emails of Benfica dates back to 2017 and 2018, when communications between elements linked to the Benfica structure were revealed by third parties in Porto Canal. The trial began in September 2022.