Former prime minister José Sócrates has been in court all day answering further questions but later may be released under restrictions, according to his lawyer João Araújo who, when asked by reporters outside the Criminal Court of Lisbon how Sócrates was faring, joked - ‘better than me.’
Home based detention with restrictions also may be announced for the other defendants Carlos Santos Silva, a longtime manager and friend of José Sócrates, Gonçalo Ferreira Trindade, a lawyer, and João Perna, José Sócrates’ driver.
Correio da Manha stated today that the driver has been used a 'bag man' to ferry cash between Lisbon and Paris and the investigation continues under the catch-all phrase, ‘banking irregularities’
After Sócrates was defeated in the 2011 parliamentary elections he said during an interview on RTP that he had only one bank account that he had held for 25 years.
If not before, by 2013 Sócrates had accounts with Caixa Geral, BCP, BPI, Montepio, Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
Sócrates then moved into a €2.8 million apartment in Paris (overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and the Seine) currently on the market at €4 million, and treated himself to a €95,000 Mercedes to ease the financial pain of becoming a philosophy student.
His lon term interest in apartments in the Heron Castilho apartment building in Lisbon has come into play where it seems that Sócrates’ mother has, probably unwittingly, been involved in dealings that were not legal and which provided significant sums to fund her son's studies and his Parisian restaurant bills.
Indeed, media researchers have concluded that Socrates' mother may have been one of the key pawns he has used to launder money from the illicit gains that he was receiving while running the country and before, when Minister for the Environment.
There now is a link between Sócrates and the Golden Visa scandal - Jaime Couto Alves, who currently is in custody after being arrested during the Operation Labyrinth investigations into the issuing of Golden Visas.
Alves is linked to the pharmaceutical company Octapharma, from which José Sócrates has been drawing €12,000 a month as a consultant on Latin America, and also is the sole director of a real estate company that owns an apartment in the Heron Castilho building where Sócrates and his mother have owned apartments since 1998.
The plots thicken and it is possible that Sócrates, far from being allowed home, could remain in pre-trial detention if the charges finally made are serious enough. Public prosecutor Rosário Teixeira will be aiming for her quarrie's continued detention but the judge Carlos Alexandre will decide if the charges are serious enough to warrant further discomfort and humiliation for Sócrates, Portugal's original Teflon man.
