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Monchique: stolen council funds must be repaid or deputy mayor goes to jail

gavelThe former Deputy Mayor of Monchique council has lost his appeal against a conviction for embezzlement and falsification of documents, he now must pay back €500,000.

The council was certain that António Mira’s appeal in Évora would fail and already has budgeted for the return of the stolen funds in this year’s municipal accounts.

Mira had claimed that the money raised by the old double invoicing trick was used to pay cash to staff who had worked overtime during the fires of 2003 and 2004, and to pay holiday money to staff.  Only six of 250 staff that were questioned admitted to accepting cash payments.

The Évora appeal court upheld the May 2016 ruling in Portimão that the cash not only was raised fraudulently but was paid into the defendant’s bank account and that of his wife.

The former mayor has to repay around €332,000 plus interest up, taking the total to €500,000. If he fails to pay up, Mira faces a five year prison term.

The socialist party deputy mayor was in charge of the council’s finances from 2001 to 2009 during which period he, "appropriated €332,744.94 belonging to the municipality of Monchique, thereby seeking to obtain for himself an economic benefit to which he knew he had no right."

The current mayor, the Social Democrat, Rui André, commented that he had been counting on the return of the money and interest, “more than half a million euros, to carry out the projects we have in hand in the coming years."

During the hearing, Mira admitted falsifying documents that allowed bills to be paid twice but denied that money was for his own benefit.

The appeal court concluded that, as Mira could not provide a list of those receiving cash payments and that €373,371 was found in Mira and his ex-wife’s bank accounts which they had failed to declare to the tax office, he was guilty as charged.

In May 2016, Mira received a suspended sentence of five years, accompanied by an immediate fine of €6,000.

According to the judgment, the prison sentence had been suspended on the condition that the defendant pay, within four years, more than €332,000 with interest, the sum that Monchique council claimed that Mira had stolen.

The judges in 2016 agreed that Mira had "intentionally" stolen money while in a position of trust and had acted with the intention of keeping the funds resulting from his actions.

Whether Mira still has the remainder of the four years left within which to repay the money was not made clear in the court report, but pay it he must.