The Constitutional Court has refused to consider an appeal lodged by the former MP, Duarte Lima, against a six-year jail sentence he received in the BPN Homeland fraud and money-laundering case.
This being the Portuguese justice system, Lima can appeal his unsuccessful appeal to the Constitutional Court - to the Constitutional Court.
True to form, Duarte Lima had challenged the decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal that reduced his sentence from ten, to six years in prison.
In June, Duarte Lima lost another of his appeals in the Constitutional Court, which considered that the defendant was not right in his requests for three nullities.
The former Social Democrat Party MP was sentenced in November 2014 to a sentence of ten years' imprisonment for being part of fraud and money laundering scam in the BPN Homeland case.
Since then, Duarte Lima has fired off several appeals to the Supreme Court of Justice and to the Constitutional Court in a concerted campaign to stay out of jail. It helps that he is a lawyer with a good understanding of the country's Byzantine appeal processes.
Duarte Lima faces court again, he is being tried in an abuse of trust case related to the misappropriation of €5 million that belonged to Rosalina Ribeiro.
Ribeiro was murdered in Brazil on December 7, 2009. She was killed with two shots after allegedly refusing to sign a document diverting millions to Lima from the estate of millionaire, Lúcio Thomé Feteira.
Lima will stand trial in Lisbon, accused of murder, after Brazil’s government agreed that the case could be heard in Portugal.
