He’s been dodging the sentence for years, but time finally appears to be up for Manuel Godinho, the ‘Scrap Metal King of Ovar’ and key player in the Face Oculta investigation that is at last seeing ‘all those condemned’ filing into the country’s jails.
Aveiro court has reportedly issued a warrant for Godinho’s arrest, with the order that he must pay the State €350,000 within the next 10 days.
It’s not immediately clear however where Godinho is. For a time following his convictions he lived in Brazil, although tabloid Correio da Manhã suggests he is back in Portugal now and has assured all those asking that he won’t be trying to evade justice.
Godinho is the fourth Face Oculta defendant to be ‘obliged’ to serve the jail term facing him. Reduced from the original 17-and-a-half years to 13 years, CM writes that this could be further reduced to just four-and-a-half years depending on ‘good behaviour’, as many of the crimes for which Godinho was originally sentenced have now exceeded time-limits stipulated under Portuguese law.
Fellow defendants Armando Vara, Manuel Guiomar and João Tavares all recently conceded they had reached the end of the line of the appeals process and presented themselves at the gates of different jails.
By natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
Article by kind permission of https://www.portugalresident.com