The relationship between Portimão council and operating company Portimão Urbis is, as of today, being carefully analysed by the fearsome General Inspectorate of Finance (Inspeção-Geral de Finanças, or GF-I for short.)
The crack inspection team will look at files, computer record and bank account details at the council and at the council-owned company, Portimão Urbis.
The objective of this inspection is to check the dealings of council departments with Portimao Urbis and to analyse relevant financial accounts between 2009 and 2013, according to a statement issued to day by the council which of course is under the new management of mayor Isilda Gomes.
As well as looking at financial transactions between the two bodies, the inspectors of GF-I will be looking at all contracts and relationships during the period and to unpick the financial relationships, using all its well-proven techniques - it will need them as this is a huge case of corruption in local government and is excellent news for truth and justice. If there is anything to fiind, the inspectors will find it.
This GF-I investigation will work in coorination with the team of auditors brought in by Isilda Gomes to unravel the complex workings of the previous administration led for 12 years by Manuel da Luz who left the council with debts nearing €170 million and with one of the worst payment records of any council in Portugal at over 800 days.
Remember, if you will, last June with reports of the arrest of two of Portimão’s stalwart councillors; the former deputy mayor Luís Carito and the head of Portimão Urbis, Jorge Campos, who are both awaiting trial on charges of mismanagement of funds and corruption.
The arrests related to a failed 2009 project to set up a €200 million complex of film studios and associated services next to the Algarve’s failed International Autodrome, and a hare-brained €500 million theme park.
The council budgeted €700,000 for ‘initial studies’ and the Finanças inspectorate will now be asking where it all went. There will be much more besides and hopefully the Inspectorate will discover how this Algarve council managed to accumulate the largest council debt in the country, a debt that the current administration is saddled with paying off with the involuntary help of Portimão’s long-suffering ratepayers.
In a Pythonesque assertation the former mayor Manuel da Luz accepted that there had been serious errors in the management of Portimão Urbis, while claiming at the same time that he was unaware of any of them. Despite being in charge of the council and its finances this wafer thin excuse may be put to trial should the private and public financial investigations reveal the truth behind Portimão's disasterous finances.
