The Public Prosecutor is investigating MPs who have been fiddling their travel allowances by using registered addresses miles from the capital.
The revelations in March this year, centred around the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party, may yet come back to haunt MPs who have been economical with the truth.
The Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating whether this trickery is fraudulent as the public purse has adversely been affected by cheating MPs whose false statements ensured that travel allowances were paid at a higher rate than was applicable.
The Attorney General's Office today revealed that an investigation is being carried out by the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action of Lisbon but that defendants have not yet been named.
The controversy erupted in March this year after a report in Observador revealed that the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party, Feliciano Barreiras Duarte, had registered his parents' address in the Leiria district, as his own.
Duarte in fact lives on Avenida de Roma, right in the centre of Lisbon but was happy to claim travel allowances as if he lived miles out of the city.
Duarte’s limp excuse fooled nobody, "As the fiscal address is the only one relevant to any administrative and fiscal matter, including the right to vote, I understood that this was of course the address that should be placed on the register of the Assembly of the Republic." He understood wrong and later resigned.
Duarte also had been under pressure after his C.V. referred to his position as ‘Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley,’ which was not true.
See, ‘Top Social Democrat resigns over CV and travel expenses fiddle’ 18 March, 2018