The judges of the Lisbon Court of Appeal denied in its entirety this Wednesday the appeal that the Public Ministry presented against the coercive measures applied within the scope of the Operation Influencer and they ruled in favor of the defendants Vítor Escária, former chief of staff of the former prime minister, and Diogo Lacerda Machado, businessman and friend of António Costa, the only ones who appealed.
This is simply because the judges, the court summarizes in a note, concluded that the facts established up to the first interrogation “are not, in themselves, integrating any criminal type”, nor recognizing the existence of any danger that justifies the application of measures of coercion.
Therefore, the judges annulled the bail of 150 thousand euros that the investigating judge had imposed on Lacerda Machado, as well as the obligation for him not to go abroad, recovering his passport. Escária is also free to leave the country again.
In a statement from Recção de Lisboa, it is said that the court analyzed all the facts invoked in the order that presented the defendants for the first interrogation, “highlighting that one cannot confuse a fact, as a historical event, with the content of wiretaps or even with news” from newspapers. “It resulted from this analysis that none of the facts presented resulted in the commission of crimes, not exceeding the development of the functions of each of the participants, all of whom acted within the scope of the same”, consider the judges.
The judges, the note states, emphasize that “there is no legislation in Portugal on the activity of lobby[ing]legislation that, if it existed, would avoid many dubious situations like some of those found in the case.” And he adds: “The court draws attention to the incorrectness of dealing with State matters at restaurant tables, forgetting procedures and forgetting the need for the relationships between representatives of particular interests and government officials within the scope of their functions are documented.”
Regarding the need to apply coercive measures, the Lisbon Report states that it analyzed the existing dangers, “concluding, also here, that they do not exist in the specific case”. At the end of the clarification, the court emphasizes that “its decision is intended only to determine whether there is cause for the application of coercive measures and not to analyze the merits of the ongoing criminal investigation”.
The Public Ministry had initially requested preventive detention for Lacerda Machado and Vítor Escária and bonds of 200 thousand euros for Afonso Salema and 100 thousand for Rui Oliveira Neves, both administrators of the company Start Campus, as well as the suspension of the mandate of the mayor of Sines , Nuno Mascarenhas. On appeal, however, the prosecutors abdicated from asking for preventive detention for the two defendants due to Escária’s dismissal and António Costa’s resignation.
Last November, the investigating judge Nuno Dias Costa chose to release the five defendants and not to validate the crimes of malfeasance and active and passive corruption that were attributed to some of the suspects. The magistrate considered that only Lacerda Machado, Escária, and two then administrators of Start Campus Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves were charged with the crime of influence peddling, concluding that Nuno Mascarenhas should not be charged with any crime.
A Operation Influencer is focused on the investigation of an alleged favoritism of a megaproject to install a gigantic digital data storage center in Sines. The project, called Sines 4.0 and promoted by the company Start Campus, has a small part completed, with the rest being built on land that includes a Special Conservation Zone.