During the final argument session on July 2nd, the Public Prosecutor did not recommend a specific penalty for Cristina Rodrigues, expressing doubts about what is more blameworthy in the deputy’s behavior from a legal-penal versus an ethical standpoint.
Deputy Cristina Rodrigues has been charged with the crimes of damage and unlawful access. The Public Prosecutor’s Office argued that “it is not credible that someone would resign at 10:00 in the morning of one day and make changes to a file by 16:00 the previous day.”
The prosecution suggested that using “some common sense” would allow one to “conclude, without great leaps in reasoning, that there was a massive change of directories followed by a delete operation.”
In the first session of this trial, Cristina Rodrigues denied the facts outlined in the Public Prosecutor’s charges: “For now, I only say that I reject the facts ascribed to me.”
In the 2022 indictment order, the Public Prosecutor classified Cristina Rodrigues’ conduct as having “very high illegality,” though they considered not applying a penalty exceeding five years, as she has no criminal record.
Besides Cristina Rodrigues, another defendant in this trial is Sara Fernandes, a former PAN employee, who is charged by the Public Prosecutor with the crime of damage related to software or other data alongside the current Chega deputy.
The case revolves around an “IT blackout” of emails of PAN leaders in 2020, at the time when Cristina Rodrigues was still a deputy of the party.
Cristina Rodrigues later became an unaffiliated deputy after leaving PAN, ran on Chega’s lists, and was elected as a deputy, a position she currently holds.
The Public Prosecutor concluded that “the defendants acted deliberately, freely, and consciously according to a pre-designed plan to prevent PAN and its members from accessing the content of the party’s email messages,” as stated in the accusation.
“The defendants removed thousands of email messages from the said mailbox, knowing they did not have authorization to do so. Their aim was to – and they succeeded in – preventing the PAN party from pursuing its political activity,” according to the indictment.
