Algarve tourism boss Desidério Silva was the star turn in Portimão court yesterday as he avoided answering some rather difficult questions about a property license and falsification of documents.
Silva is now well known as the well fed boss of the Algarve Tourism Board and as the former mayor of Albufeira which he left in financial tatters before his period of office officially was due to end.
The building allegations go back some 15 years when Silva was the deputy mayor of Albufeira and is said to have either authorised, or turned a blind eye, to an increase in height of a property project, leaving the existing house in the next plot at a distinct visual disadvantage.
The miffed property owners claim that Silva and a band of complicit council engineers allowed the adjoining property to be built in a way that varied significantly to the plans submitted and this has affected both physically and visually their own house which is now in the shade for most of the day.
The allegation is that the council, through Desidério Silva, did nothing to stop the illegal alterations in height to the building on the adjoining plot, a building that was at such obvious variance to the plan submitted to the council that something corrupt was going on at council level as nobody at the normally mustard keen council did anything to halt the build.
The couple in court are after €700,000 in compensation and say that the council has never wanted to adress their complaints and indeed they have been deliberately marginalised because of their attempts to complain.
Silva says that this problem is nothing to do with him, the same stance he took on the whopping deficit he left when slipping away from Albufeira council, and claims he did not know the owners of the elevated house or the builder involved in its illegal construction.
Silva, if found guilty, will be in good company as Macario Correia, the former mayor of Tavira and then Faro, also was found guilty of ignoring building and zoning regulations when in Tavira.
Hopefully Silva, if convicted, will not follow Correia's example and spend the next few years challenging the ruling.
