Municipality’s extravagant working lunches ‘exposed’ by Sábado last year
PJ police descended on Oeiras Town Hall today, in an investigation sparked by Sábado’s report last summer on extravagant working lunches.
According to the exposé (seized in delight by popular satirical channel ‘Isto É Gozar com Quem Trabalha’) there were 1,441 ‘working lunches’ in the post-Covid period that saw council VIPs consuming a “massive” amount of food, including lobster, crab, langoustine, sushi, oysters, suckling pig and tiger prawns, occasionally at the same time in different locations.
As Expresso recalls, Sábado wrote that of the 302 meals enjoyed by mayor Isaltino Morais, “there were three cases of lunches on the same day in different restaurants”.
These also involved “tobacco, wine, aphrodisiac saké, brandy and Moët & Chandon (champagne)”.
The furore led Oeiras mayor Isaltino Morais to ‘present and publish an itinerary of restaurants in the municipality’. He also told reporters that there “is not and never has been a practice of extravagant meals” on his watch. Everything that happened did so “within the law” with receipts passed for “accountancy control”.
A lot of jokey comments followed – and up until today, very little else.
As reports explain, at stake are more than €139,000 in working lunches, described as “excessive catering expenses, paid for with municipal money.”
Oeiras municipality meantime has said it is “providing all the clarifications and information requested.
“The searches are related to the municipality’s working lunches, as was public knowledge last year, and are taking place in the Paços do Concelho and Atrium Building”.
The searches and the scope of the case have also been confirmed to Lusa by a source linked to the investigation, according to whom the inquiry is being led by the Lisbon Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DIAP).
Offenses under suspicion include malfeasance, abuse of power and embezzlement, says CNN Portugal.
Isaltino Morais has always been a larger than life political character. He has had a long career, most of it in the local municipality of Oeiras, albeit he had a brief period as Minister for Cities, Spatial Planning and the Environment (PSD), followed by a spell in jail for tax fraud and money laundering. He managed to bounce back, following his release from jail, to win back his position as Oeiras’ mayor (this time an Independent) in the September 2021 elections.
Sources: Lusa/ Expresso/ CNN Portugal
