Ricardo Salgado charged in Operation Marquês – the Public.en

Ricardo Salgado, former president of the BES, is to be heard, in the quality of the defendant, in the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP) in Lisbon, the prosecutor Rosário Teixeira and Paulo Silva, inspector of the Tax Authority, in the context of the Operation Marquis. The interrogation occurs at a time that the investigation centred on the former prime minister José Sócrates is in the final phase, having the attorney general of the Republic, Joana Marques Vidal, determined that the process has to be completed by mid-March.

The hearing of the Salt was advanced by SIC and confirmed by the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR), through a press release. “Ricardo Espírito Santo Silva Salgado was, this morning, identified as the suspect and is being interrogated by the Public Prosecutor, in the framework of the so-called Operation Marquis, which runs under the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action,” reads the note.

the Money paid by Portugal Telecom to the shareholders of Oi in the sights of researchers

The suspect, said the PGR, is suspicious of facts which may integrate the crimes of corruption, abuse of trust, influence peddling, money laundering and tax fraud qualified.

The process Operation Marquis account with 19 defendants, including the former prime minister José Sócrates, who was arrested pre-emptively for more than nine months, and that is indicted for tax fraud qualified, money laundering and passive corruption for illicit act.

In the center of the investigation are the more than 23 million euros gathered by the childhood friend of José Sócrates, Carlos Santos Silva, in Switzerland, and that this has transferred to Portugal, a small part in 2004 and the overwhelming majority in 2010 and 2011. At that time, the money was declared by Santos Silva-level tax within the scope of the Schemes Exceptional Regularization Tax I and II. THE Public Prosecutor has been following the circuit of the money raised in Switzerland and believes that the millions are in the reality of Socrates.

Initially, the Public Prosecutor pointed out the suspicions of corruption only to the Lena group, arguing that several million that came into the accounts the Swiss were the counterpart by the intervention of Socrates, while political responsibility, in the development of the business of the group, in particular the construction of pre-fabricated houses in Venezuela, the road concessions, the project of the TGV and the works of Park School.

In 2015, the research was able to find what he considers to be the source of the money, keeping the suspicions of corruption relating to the Lena group connected to only 2.9 million euros, which originated in the group and passed through the account of the administrator Joaquim Baroque. The fact that we have discovered that the 12 million euros that has also passed through those accounts originated in off-shore controlled by Hélder Bataglia, administrator of ESCOM, a company of the Espirito Santo Group, has opened a new front of the poison, related with the resort of Vale do Lobo, in the Algarve.

later, the Prosecutor submits that the financial transfers made by off-shore controlled by Bataglia were paid an "undue advantage" to Socrates for this, while the prime minister, to promote the Espírito Santo Group (GES). In letters rogatory sent to the angolan authorities to request the constitution of an accused person to Bataglia and interrogation, and is not said in that specific situation occurred this favouritism, referring only to "in particular with regard to the involvement of GES in Portugal Telecom group". It is in the framework of the latter suspected that Ricardo Salgado, the former leader of GES, is to be heard.

This investigation was opened in July of 2013, having finished in October 2015 the deadline for its completion. Such has determined only that the process to stop to be in secret of justice to the suspects, and wizards of the case, since the law does not provide for any consequence for non-compliance with these deadlines. In March of last year, the director of DCIAP, Amadeu War, established September 15 this year as a deadline for the conclusion of the case. But, the deadline was eventually extended by the attorney general, after a request of the holders of the research, which argued that it lacked analyze important documentation, part of it recovered only in mid-July, and still waiting for the response to some requests for international cooperation.