Latest shock in Santa Casa da Misericórdia’s fateful efforts at internationalisation
The depths to which Santa Casa da Misericórdia’s efforts at internationalisation have sunk have become horribly clear through a journalistic investigation involving Expresso, in Portugal and Brazilian publication Piauí.
Today, Expresso’s headline screams: “Santa Casa owes money to the largest criminal organisation in Brazil”.
The project of exporting Santa Casa’s loosely-termed ‘games’ (involving scratch cards, lotteries and other legal forms of gambling) has already lost the organisation that funnels profits into social charitable works well over €50 million. But, up till now, the unmitigated financial ‘disaster’ has not been linked to organised crime.
Expresso’s article however explains that “there were signs that something wrong had happened in Brazil between 2021 and 2023” – 2023 being the year the ‘sacked’ former ‘provedora’ (woman in charge of Santa Casa) denounced what she described as a “series of irregularities” to the Portuguese Public Prosecutor’s Office, requested a forensic audit, and shut down all business dealings with Brazil.
That audit was ‘finally delivered last month (delivered to Santa Casa, says Expresso) “but there was no mention in it of the PCC” – PCC being the initials of Brazil’s ‘largest criminal organisation’, the Primeiro Comando do Capital (First Command of the Capital).
The details of the PCC debt were passed, says the paper, “by a parallel route” – namely a director of MCE, the gaming company purchased by Santa Casa in São Paulo “where PCC is most active”, and which owes the group 200,000 Brazilian ‘reais’ (roughly €40,000).
In the ‘grand scheme’ of Santa Casa’s losses, €40,000 is fairly meaningless. But it is to whom it is owed that is raising eyebrows.
For now, the current administration of Santa Casa “has not wished to comment”, says Expresso, which gives a potted history of PCC’s dealings in the gaming market over the last decade as a way of laundering money made through the trafficking of drugs.
So why DID Santa Casa ultimately decide to involve itself in PCC?
“Ricardo Gonçalves, president of MCE and a director of Santa Casa Global Portugal and Santa Casa Global Brazil, did not want to answer the questions of Expresso or of Piauí, alleging that these issues were under investigation in a criminal case bound by Secrecy of Justice”.
For now, this added twist to a catastrophic project to ‘internationalise’ a charity that began centuries ago, with the mission to treat and support the sick, the disabled and abandoned newborns, is simply ‘out there’, adding to depressing column inches on how pitifully a ‘name of reference’ can fall from an apparent state of grace into a truly filthy gutter. ND
Source material: Expresso
