Judges in the Golden Visa trial, where 21 defendants were variously accused of corruption and using Portugal’s tax incentive scheme to line their own pockets, were at pains to point out that they had come to their decision without any pressure whatsoever from anyone.
This extraordinary statement, rather like a dinner guest informing the host that he is not going to steal the silverware, raises suspicions that verdicts in other cases have been subject to external influence.
The public ministry had hoped that former minister Miguel Macedo (pictured above), Jarmela Palos, António Figueiredo and businessman Jaime Gomes would receive jail sentences but accepted that these would probably be suspended.
As it turned out, with the verdicts given on Friday, Macedo was acquitted, as was the former director of the SEF, Jarmela Palos, with the judge stating that, "there was no agreement with Jarmela Palos to accelerate the granting of gold visas."
António Figueiredo, the former president of the Registry and Notary Institute, was given four years and seven months, suspended, having spent a year in preventive custody and several months under house arrest.
Maria Antónia Anes, a former secretary general of the Ministry of Justice was facing corruption charges and received a suspended sentence.
As for the dastardly foreigners involved in this case, Chinese defendants received fines, an Angolan businessman, Eliseu Bumba, was found not guilty on all charges and, a name that keeps cropping up when high-level corruption is mentioned, Paulo Lalanda e Costa, formerly heading the drug company Octapharma, was exonerated.
The mammoth trial, that started in February, 2017, lasted for 73 sessions with the intention of the public ministry to bring to account those it accused of being part of a web of corruption that variously fast-tracked Golden Visas, were involved in property deals with qualifying applicants and were party to widespread peddling of influence.
Judge Fernando Henriques said that the decisions were arrived at without external pressure and that Portuguese justice "did not do favours for anyone."
Thoughts now turn to Operation Marquês and the forthcoming trial involving José Sócrates and his not so merry band of co-defendants. Will the public ministry again fail to nail those it is convinced lie at the heart of corruption in the body politic and in the grubby world of old-style Portuguese business practices.