There is no one who can stop the political crisis in Portugal, but the prosecutor’s investigation that triggered it is shrinking by the minute. On Monday, Judge Nuno Dias Costa released the five prisoners who, in his opinion, were not suspected of corruption or subterfuge, contrary to the opinion of the State Ministry. The judge considered their detention to be “disproportionate”, ordered by the prosecutors of Operation Influencer, who arrested them a week ago as part of an operation that triggered an institutional tsunami: this led to the resignation of the Prime Minister António Costa after it was announced that his role in the approval of several energy projects would be investigated by the Supreme Court and the call for early elections on March 10. Although the Supreme Court must make its final conclusion, the investigating judge indicated in his decision on Monday that prosecutors’ suspicions about the pressure exerted on Costa to carry out these projects were unfounded, the newspaper said Public.
The judge’s decision, reported by Expresso, claims that the facts described by the prosecution do not prove the existence of passive or active corruption, since the investigators did not demonstrate the existence of “quid pro quo for certain conduct.” He only charged Vítor Escária, the prime minister’s former chief of staff, and the lawyer Diogo Lacerda Machado, a childhood friend of Costa’s, with influence peddling, against whom he imposed bail of 150,000 euros. Both have their passports revoked because of the risk of absconding – a concern he shares with prosecutors – from Lacerda to Guinea-Bissau, where he has professional relationships and “it would be easy for him to hide”, and from Escária to Angola , where he used to work.
He blamed the Start Campus company representatives, Alfonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, for crimes of influence peddling and bribery. The mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, who was also arrested and detained for six nights, was released without charge.
The blow that the investigating judge deals in his decision to the prosecutors who requested the preventive detention of Lacerda and Escária and who will appeal against the precautionary measures imposed, comes in addition to several errors that emerged during the investigation. One of them was the confusion of the name of António Costa with that of his Minister of Economy, António Costa Silva, in the transcription of a telephone conversation between Diogo Lacerda Machado and the executive president of Start Campus, Alfonso Salema. It would be Lacerda himself who, in his testimony before the judge, would warn of this confusion of great importance, as Salema called on his adviser and friend of the Prime Minister to try to persuade the Portuguese government to demand a beneficial change from the European Commission at Start Campus, sponsor of the construction of a huge data storage center in Sines. “Then I see us taking the initiative to provoke and make suggestions. If it was about finances, I would talk to him [el ministro Fernando] Medina or with António Mendes, the foreign minister. If it were economy, I would prepare a way to reach António Costa himself later,” replies Lacerda Salema.
Another error brought to light by Expresso concerns an alleged decision by João Galamba, arguido (official suspect) in the case and who resigned as Minister of Infrastructure on Monday. Prosecutors considered that Start Campus had induced Galamba to draw up a draft decree to exploit the use of the National Electric Network (REN) gas pipeline site for its fiber optic data cables, but the identification of the decree included them in their investigation involved agreed on another matter unrelated to the case.
Galamba’s resignation will be one of the topics discussed by the resigning Prime Minister Costa and the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who will meet this afternoon at the Belém Palace. Since the outbreak of the crisis, Costa has reiterated that he has never committed “illegal or reprehensible acts” but that the mere fact that he is under investigation on suspicion is incompatible with the “dignity” of the office of prime minister.
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