The Social Democratic Party (PSD) opposition wants to listen to what the Minister for Internal Affairs has to say about the archiving of an internal Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) audit report that outlined corruption in the ranks.
The recently appointed director of the SEF, Carlos Moreira, commissioned the internal audit, completed a month ago, which contained allegations of corruption and the illegal granting of visas without proof of legal entry into the country.
Portugal’s Public Prosecution service finally has accused a Bank of Portugal employee of insider trading at the time of the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) over three years ago.
The unnamed employee sold all his BES shares two days before the bank's collapse and its resolution on August 3, 2014.
In just ten years, the number of Portuguese who speak a second language has increased from 52% to 72%, according to our old friends at the National Institute of Statistics.
This makes Portugal shine out among its European partners as its adults have shown the greatest increase in their language skills.
The parents of one of the children killed in a crash in the south of France were from the Vila Real de Santo António area of the Algarve.
The school bus, full of children, was hit by a train on a railway crossing, leaving five dead and 24 injured.
Albufeira council has turned its attention towards cultural heritage and architecture and has confirmed it has applied for European funds to renovate the old Igreja Matriz of Santa Maria and to transform the city's old court house into an Arts and Crafts Centre.
The decision to apply for funding from the Algarve 2020 grants programme was made at the council meeting on December 5th and these two projects have a budget of €2.45 million. The "Rehabilitation of the old Church of Albufeira" project alone will cost €1.6 million.
The Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court (TCRS) in Santarém has overturned a case brought by the Bank of Portugal against Ricardo Salgado and Amílcar Pires of BES whom it claimed had mismanaged things, leading to a lack of money laundering and terrorist financing prevention measures at overseas BES operations in Angola, Cape Verde, Miami and Macao.
The former BES president Ricardo Salgado and former BES administrator Amílcar Pires alleged their rights had been breached during the legal procedure.
The promise in August this year, made by officials at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, that there would be more staff recruited for the Foreigners and Borders Service, is being upheld and the service has advertised for 100 further inspectors.
The money was made available by the Ministry of Finance to help avert a strike this summer.
Portugal’s coastal areas have been on a yellow warning as the weather out to sea deteriorated, bringing mountainous seas.
An Air Force helicopter was scrambled on Wednesday, to rescue a critically ill man from a cruise ship 257 kilometres from shore as eight metre waves battered the ship and 40 knot winds hampered progress.
