Two years ago, the court ruled that stories published about one of José Sócrates’ ex-girlfriends were in the public interest and that claim for €200,000 for each news item was dismissed.
Journalist, Fernanda Câncio, has lost in court again and Sábado again has the right to publish news about her, her relationship with Sócrates and Operation Marquês.
The legal action against Sábado magazine and other Cofina publications in 2015, as well as against the newspapers O Sol and i, is at an end.
Câncio wanted to prohibit these news agencies from reporting any facts concerning her personal relationship with the former Prime Minister and wanted to prevent any news of Operation Marquês from mentioning her name even though - during an interrogation of José Sócrates by the Public Prosecutor - the judicial investigators questioned suspicious travel expenses by Socrates and Câncio that had been paid for by the businessman, Carlos Santos Silva.
The there was the phone tap that recorded a conversation during which Sócrates and Câncio talk about the possibility of buying an apartment “for a few million euros.”
In the first court decision back in December, 2015, it was ruled that her complaint went head-to-head "with the most elementary rights of both freedom of expression and freedom of the press," and that the action by Câncio, who is a journalist at Diário de Notícias, would be "a form of censorship."
At Câncio’s appeal, the same court decided to deny her the payment of €200,000 she demanded for each news item that associated her with three ‘indisputable truths’: that she is a journalist, she was José Sócrates’ girlfriend and that investigators had collected information by phone tapping that incriminated herself and Sócrates.
The court's ruling was even more pointed, mentioning the fact that as a citizen, she should have reported the seemingly unreasonable expenditure made by her lover as the money clearly had been “obtained in a non-transparent manner.”
The Lisbon Civil Court used further arguments that justify news stories that has been published by the Cofina media group (Sábado, CM, CMTV and Flash) and stated that there is a public interest in the disclosure of facts relating to expenses, payments and travel costs which, although they may have been carried out in the private life of that person, are suspected to be based on illegally gained funds.
Fernanda Câncio has published stories about Operation Marquês while in a relationship with the former PM and benefitted from his generosity with money that is suspected to be the result of illegal activities.
Câncio’s name will be all over the papers again as a result of her failed legal appeal. As for legal fees, she is using the lawyer recommended and probably paid for in part, by Armando Vara, a former Caixa Geral de Depósitos director and former socialist minister, who also is a suspect in Operation Marquês.