Portuguese politics has just suffered a shock, the extent of which is still uncertain. This Tuesday morning in Lisbon, the police arrested two people close to the Prime Minister, the socialist António Costa, for alleged irregularities in the concession for the exploitation of lithium deposits and green hydrogen projects. One of those arrested is Vítor Escária, the prime minister’s chief of staff. The other is businessman Diogo Lacerda Machado, a great friend of Costa’s, who in the past entrusted him with strategic missions such as the nationalization of the Portuguese airline TAP.
A few hours later, the Attorney General’s Office (Prosecution Office) announced in a statement that the prime minister was the subject of a separate Supreme Court investigation over his role in promoting energy transition-related businesses. “During the course of the investigation, findings emerged that suspects had invoked the name and powers of the Prime Minister and that he had intervened in this context to declassify proceedings,” the note said.
This Tuesday, the Public Security Police carried out around 42 searches, including the Prime Minister’s official residence, the São Bento Palace, and the Ministries of Infrastructure, Environment and Climate Change. According to the newspaper Público, the current owners João Galamba and Duarte Cordeiro are declared arguidos (official suspects in the Portuguese court case) after the search of their private homes. The mayor of Sines, the socialist Nuno Mascarenhas, and two businessmen were also arrested during the operation.
The prime minister’s own communications office confirmed to the Lusa agency that the office of chief of staff Vítor Escária had been searched, but without further comment. After the searches and arrests, Costa canceled the events planned for this Tuesday in Porto and met for half an hour with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, at the Belém Palace. The seriousness of the institutional crisis that triggered the operation was confirmed by the meeting that is now taking place in Belém between the Portuguese Head of State and the Attorney General of the Republic, Lucília Gago, who promoted the investigation. After this meeting, the notice was distributed to inform the Prime Minister of the investigation, who was again summoned to his official residence by the President of the Republic.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right), which leads the opposition, has called an emergency meeting of its permanent commission this afternoon. At the end, an official statement is expected from its President Luís Montenegro. For his part, the leader of the Liberal Initiative, Rui Rocha, called for the resignation of Costa as Prime Minister due to the “seriousness” of the suspicions affecting his inner circle and, if this does not happen, the dissolution of the Assembly of the Republic, a power that the country’s president has and which would lead to new elections. André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party, demanded the immediate dismissal of Minister João Galamba and a statement from Costa to the country.
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The operation is part of an investigation by the Central Investigative and Criminal Police, which began at the end of 2019 after an anonymous complaint, to determine whether Portuguese companies (EDP, Galp and REN) were favored in the exploitation of a green hydrogen in Sines, the large industrial center around around the port, which is being converted from the polluting factories of the past to decarbonized ones. The first project to export green hydrogen to Holland was presented by a Dutch businessman in the summer of 2019, before the government publicly involved the three Portuguese companies in it. In addition, the case examines the lithium mining concessions in Montalegre.
It is currently not clear whether the irregularities will affect the other major lithium mining project in Covas do Barroso, a few kilometers from the border with Galicia, which received approval from the Portuguese environmental agency this year despite receiving almost a thousand allegations against it are a contrary report by a UN rapporteur. The site is also the only Portuguese enclave declared a World Heritage Site by the FAO.
The investigation into alleged irregularities in concessions presented as essential to the energy transition concerns both the current environment minister, Duarte Cordeiro, and his predecessor, João Pedro Matos Fernández. Both could be declared Arguidos in the next few hours, as well as the current Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba, who was Secretary of State for Energy during the Matos Fernández era. Galamba has been under question for months over his handling of the political crisis surrounding TAP airline, which led to him having to testify before a parliamentary commission of inquiry.
João Galamba, during a meeting on hydrogen held in Lisbon in 2021, when he was Secretary of State for Energy.ANTONIO PEDRO SANTOS (EFE)
The Attorney General’s Office confirmed at the beginning of January that investigations into transactions related to lithium and green hydrogen were ongoing under judicial confidentiality. When asked about this process, Minister Galamba replied: “This absurd process has never been heard of, precisely because it is absurd and empty,” Público recalled this Tuesday.
As a result of this operation, the communications of former Environment Minister João Pedro Matos Fernández were intercepted by court order. Prime Minister António Costa was recorded in four of the several wiretapped conversations. Three of them were destroyed and discarded because they were irrelevant to the investigation, but there is a fourth, registered on December 28, 2020, in which Costa and his minister address the lithium and green hydrogen deals and the possibility of raising community funds billions Investors, according to the weekly newspaper Expresso.
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