Former minister Armando Vara has been released from the indignity of house arrest as his conditions have been relaxed by the court.
Vara is implicated in the swirl of corruption and high-level bribery allegations covered by Operation Marquês, the same operation that involves former PM, José Sócrates.
The investigating judge Carlos Alexandre decided that Vara could cough up a €300,000 deposit to end his house arrest.
The allegations of corruption, tax fraud and money laundering relate to 2006 and 2007 while Vara worked at the state owned bank Caixa Geral which lent €200 million to Vale do Lobo and even took a shareholding in the business.
One of the luxury Algarve resort’s owners, Helder Bataglia, is connected to Escom, a conglomerate of companies that represented the interests of the Espírito Santo Group in Angola and other African countries. (Escom also was involved in the submarines bribery case.)
Bank transfer details provided by the Swiss authorities to Portugal’s prosecutors showed suspicious movements with a payment of €1 million transferred to an account held by an offshore company in Panama called Vama Holdings whose beneficiary is allegedly Helder Bataglia.
This transfer was made from an account in the name of Baroque Joaquim Rodrigues, one of the owners of the Lena Group who also is in the Operation Marquês net.
The research shows that before this transfer, Helder Battaglia had sent a total of €12 million to Joaquim Baroque’s account.
Armando Vara was taken in for questioning and released on home arrest three months ago with an electronic surveillance device.
The magistrate accepted the request to change Vara from house arrest to bail as the prosecutor agreed that there was a decreased risk of the defendant disrupting the investigation.
In addition to paying a security deposit of €300,000, Vara is prohibited from contacting the other eight defendants in the case, including his friend José Sócrates, and may not travel outside the country without court approval.
Vara has been in a spot of bother before as he was sentenced to five years in prison for corruption in the Face Oculta prosecution but he appealed and was allowed free.
Helder Battaglia may be in the safest place - he lives in Luanda.
