Lawyers acting for jailed former Prime Minister José Sócrates have tried everything since his arrest last November to get him out of Évora prison.
Sócrates could have been allowed home on house arrest but as this involved wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, he refused, preferring the media attention of being held in jail while claiming he is innocent of all allegations against him.
Nine appeals and reviews have come to the same conclusion: there is nothing illegal about detaining Sócrates as the content of the inquiry into his afffairs is serious enough to warrant stopping him from communicating with other defendants and the media as much as is possible.
The last appeal, this one was to the Constitutional Court, ended in failure for Sócrates’ legal team which muttered about now taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which it can do now that all judicial avenues have been exhausted in Portugal.
The nine appeals to date have involved 38 judges ruling in three higher courts: the Family, the Supreme and the Constitutional. The cost to the taxpayer has yet to be assessed.
Last Friday the Constitutional Court rejected the final appeal presented by Sócrates as its judges considered that there was nothing 'unconstitutional' about how several articles of the Criminal Procedure Code had been interpreted by judge Carlos Alexandre and the appeal judges.
Sócrates has let it be known that he has sold his Lisbon home to the Pakistani Makhdoom Ali Khan in order to repay some of the mountain of cash he allegedly borrowed from his friend Carlos Santos Silva.
The €675,000 received for the Sócrates apartment in Rua Braancamp, less the €250,000 mortgage owned to Caixa Geral, less the balance of an earlier mortgage, less legal and agency fees, will leave a sum that will hardly make a dent in the suspicious multi-million ‘loans’ advanced by Silva who remains an integral part of Operation Marquês which aims to charge the pair for money laundering, corruption and tax evasion among other less than legal activities.
Makhdoom Ali Khan may now wish he had not chosen the notorious Sócrates apartment as the money transfers from the UK and Switzerland used to buy the property now are being investigated as part of his Golden Visa application.
