The Deputy Secretary of State for Finance, Ricardo Mourinho Félix, and Finance Minister Mário Centeno were under pressure today to explain why Portugal’s taxpayers are funding interest rates of up to 200% payable to the Spanish-owned bank, Santander Totta.

The ‘swaps’ contracts, entered into by the management of some of Portugal’s publicly owned transport companies including Metro do Porto, Metro de Lisboa, Carris and Sociedade de Transportes Colectivos do Porto, have current interest rates of 112%, 106% and 103%, with others at 50% and 30% interest.

Vinci Airports is clearly delighted with its purchase of Aeroportos de Portugal (ANA) and the contract to run Portugal’s airports with management noting strong traffic growth.

In fact, Portugal’s airports showed the highest growth in passenger traffic, over the second quarter of 2017 of all the airports under Vinci Airports’ management.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos, BCP and Novo Banco have decided that Joe Berardo is unlikely to repay his massive bank borrowings and have started legal proceedings to seize 75% of the Berardo Foundation’s collection of modern art which was pledged as collateral.

The court will have to decide whether the Foundation is an entirely separate legal entity, or whether is it so inexorably linked to the well-known businessman, that the art collection can be auctioned off in settlement of Berardo’s debts.

All officers at a station in the Alfragide area of Lisbon face trial on torture and racially-motivated crime charges over a 2015 incident.

All 18 officers at a Portuguese police station have been charged with torture, kidnapping and other crimes allegedly motivated by racism, prosecutors have said.

While those suspected of taking full advantage of Portugal’s Golden Visa scheme wait for their court dates, a top Lisbon lawyer seems to have found a further 'market opportunity' and now stands accused of pinching an estimated €6 million from overseas visa applicants.

The well-known lawyer, Maria Antónia Cameira, has been arrested and detained by the Judicial Police on suspicion of having made millions of euros by cheating at least a dozen foreign citizens who wanted to buy qualifying Golden Visa properties, sent her their money and ended up with neither.

After a two year wait, the GNR and Public Security police are to carry out the first evaluation tests to certify trainers of potentially dangerous dogs.

The certification process will start in September, about two years after the dangerous dogs decree law was published.

The Judicial Police service is investigating the violent death of a taxi driver on Tuesday night, July 11, who was gunned down in the entrance area of a restaurant cafe in Cabeça de Ferro, Monchique.

The incident occurred around 10:30 pm, at the ‘A Fonte’ restaurant after an argument broke out and one of the men went to his car to get a shotgun, returned and fired it at whom he thought was the cafe owner, but in fact was the taxi driver.

The delay in bringing Operation Marquês to a close and the listing of charges and a trial date for the former Prime Minister, José Sócrates, has been extended by the Attorney General, Joana Marques Vidal.

The reason now given is that the prosecution team, led by prosecutor Rosário Teixeira, has yet to receive replies to certain key letters rogatory that are needed to complete the financial picture of illicit funds, cash payments and illegal offshore transfers.