A Portuguese court dismantles the judicial operation that caused the resignation of António Costa

The investigation by prosecutors into Operation Influencer, the case that led to the resignation of António Costa as Prime Minister of Portugal last November, has once again been questioned by judges. The Lisbon Relaçao Court, the second judicial instance before which two of the detainees had filed appeals, has dismantled the entire architecture proposed by the Prosecutor's Office to unleash a spectacular operation that led to five arrests and 42 searches on November 7, including the official residence of the prime minister in São Bento. However, the greatest impact of Operation Influencer was the fall of a Government, which had an absolute majority, and the abrupt end of a legislature that was halfway through because the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, decided that the The only way out of the crisis unleashed by the resignation of the prime minister was the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of early elections.

In a 366-page resolution, the magistrates spread numerous criticisms of the work of the prosecutors who, on occasion, came to be called “inept.” They consider that until the interrogations of the five detainees in November there was no evidence of the crimes observed by the Prosecutor's Office: influence peddling, bribery, prevarication and corruption and they minimize the wiretapping as evidence. “They prove that those phrases were said and that they were uttered by the people identified in the transcripts. But they are not facts. They are means of proof. And the succession of conclusions and relationships that the public ministry draws from it are neither one thing nor another,” they state.

“The only specific event carried out by the prime minister was attendance at an event to present the project [of the data center in Sines of the company Start Campus] on April 23, 2021,” the judges point out in the resolution released by the

newspaper

. “From a relationship of friendship with a member of the Government, also publicly assumed and reiterated by both protagonists, must the conclusion be reached that there was influence peddling, active or passive corruption or prevarication?”, the magistrates question. The close relationship since their time as law students between Costa and Diogo Lacerda Machado, who worked for Start Campus at the time of the arrest, fueled, for prosecutors, suspicions of irregularities in the processing of this project.

On November 7, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Vítor Escária, one of Costa's best friends, the lawyer and consultant Diogo Lacerda Machado, the president of the Municipal Chamber of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, and two administrators of the Start Campus company, which promoted a gigantic data center in Sines. Furthermore, in a statement, the Prosecutor's Office announced that the Supreme Court had opened an investigation to elucidate Costa's role in the approval of the business projects that were under suspicion. They did not accuse the prime minister of anything specific, but pointed out that his name was mentioned in several telephone conversations tapped to the detainees and that this should be clarified. As soon as he learned of this, Costa presented his resignation as prime minister to “preserve the dignity of democratic institutions.” “I am calm with the judgment of my conscience, not only regarding illegal acts, but even reprehensible ones,” he said when announcing his resignation.

The Prosecutor's Office detained the five main defendants for a week, who were released by decision of the investigating judge Nuno Dias Costa, not considering them suspected of corruption or prevarication - he only saw signs of influence peddling. The public ministry, which appealed this decision of the judge before the Relaçao Court, even requested preventive detention for Vítor Escária and the lawyer Lacerda Machado. The two were considered the main players in several cases of corruption, influence peddling and prevarication in business projects related to the exploitation of lithium and the construction of the Sines data center.

Now, the new resolution punctures the work of prosecutors even more, since it withdraws the last precautionary measures imposed on Lacerda Machado and Escária, who from now on will be able to leave the country. The bail of 150,000 euros required from the lawyer is also withdrawn. Likewise, it states that the role of the former Minister of Infrastructure and former Secretary of State for Energy, João Galamba, who was not arrested, but was charged by the prosecutors of Operation Influencer, is related to his desire to promote the Start Campus project in Sines.

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After the resolution of the Lisbon court was released, the President of the Republic commented that "it is beginning to be more likely that there will be a Portuguese in the European Council next autumn in Brussels." The early electoral decision decided by Rebelo de Sousa has unleashed a situation of political instability, since the new conservative Government lacks sufficient parliamentary strength to carry out its initiatives alone. The elections of last March 10, in addition, caused the spectacular rise of Chega, the far-right party, which received more than a million votes and has become a force of great weight in the Assembly of the Republic with 50 deputies.