The prosecutor and the judge Carlos Alexandre believe that José Sócrates and his chum Carlos Santos Silva set up "schemes" to accumulate a fortune abroad.
One deal was for a loan of €120,000 that Sócrates obtained from Caixa Geral de Depósitos when he decided to leave for France to study philosophy, having lost the election to Passos Coelho.
This amount was ostensibly to support the former PM during his studies but the prosecution and the judge Carlos Alexandre contest this, suggesting that Sócrates took out the loan because the former prime minister knew "that he could not receive funds into his account directly from Carlos Silva, or receive funds in cash" and that the loan was a cover story for Sócrates in case anyone asked how he was supporting himself.
The public prosecutor Rosário Teixeira and the investigating judge Carlos Alexandre added that José Sócrates hatched a scheme with Carlos Santos Silva who would buy property making it look like it had been bought by Sócrates’s mother, thus "creating a supporting story for the payment of funds in the account of Mary Adelaide Monteiro, who in turn was to transfer the same amount to the account of José Socrates."
In this way the exile in Paris received €520,000 from his mother's account in 2012.
The case also alleges that in August 2012, Carlos Santos Silva bought a luxury apartment, which was then lived in by José Sócrates between September 2012 and July 2013.
These snippets are but part of the detailed prosecution being prepared for the former PM, all-in-all there are ten key accusations including Sócrates asking his friend for money, using a code in case their phone conversations were being taped.
Cash sums of €15,000 a time were taken to Paris by driver João Perna. In November 2013 alone, the former prime minister received between €90,000 and €175,000 according to a report in this week's Sábado (5-11 March, 2015) which claims to reveal 'all the secret documents.'
The defence confirms that Santos Silva lent more than €500,000 to Sócrates between the second half of 2011 and November 2014 but Carlos Santos Silva has claimed all along that that "friendship is not a crime."
Comments
If Socrates can just swallow his pride and make a token payment from his chums savings ... can he be prosecuted for a crime that does not yet exist ?
He gets away from the fleas and some of the other rather odd house guests in Evora Jail. including the soon to arrive weirdo ex- PJ inspector who apparently was a football hooligan. In between matches organising a team of 'real' police making fake searches of houses with fake search documents.
When still a copper he was involved - with Amaral - in beating up a mother reporting her missing child in 2004. Later becoming President of a missing children's charity and writing (?) a book about the missing Madeleine McCann that just spouted the usual Portuguese jibberish.