A district court today acquitted current Chega party MP Cristina Rodrigues in a case where she was accused of a “cyber blackout” involving the PAN party’s emails during her tenure as a deputy for PAN. The court also acquitted former party employee Sara Fernandes, who was accused of the crime related to software or other data damage, co-acting with the current Chega MP.
In response to this judicial decision, PAN announced that it will appeal the district court’s ruling, arguing that “the decision does not reflect the evidence presented in the case and collected by competent authorities.”
Although PAN had lodged a complaint against unidentified individuals, the investigation resulted in charges against Cristina Rodrigues, now a Chega MP but formerly of PAN, and former employee Sara Fernandes, accused in tandem in the case involving damage to software or data relating to PAN’s emails.
PAN highlighted that the prosecution’s order stated, “The defendants removed thousands of emails from the mailbox, which they knew they had no authorization to do.”
“The accused aimed to, and did, prevent the PAN party from continuing its political activities,” the party claims.
The court remarked that “the evidence produced was insufficient to demonstrate actions as described in the prosecution,” according to the presiding judge, who noted that the charges of damage and unauthorized access against Cristina Rodrigues were not substantiated.
Upon leaving the court, Cristina Rodrigues remarked, “The only blackout was the decency of the PAN leader,” and expressed a desire for compensation for the damages she endured.
The case revolves around an alleged “cyber blackout” affecting PAN’s email communications in 2020 when Cristina Rodrigues was still a deputy of the party.
The public prosecutor’s office contended that “the accused acted deliberately, freely, and knowingly, according to a prearranged plan, intending to block PAN and its members’ access to the party’s email content,” as stated in the indictment.
During the closing statements, the prosecutor did not specify a penal request, arguing that “it is not credible for someone to resign at 10 a.m. and be making data modifications at 4 p.m. the previous day.”
The prosecutor argued that employing “a bit of common sense” makes it easy to “infer, without significant leaps of logic, that there was a massive directory change followed by a delete operation.”
