Operation Marquês has been inching towards trial date for a decade
Former Socialist prime minister José Sócrates will begin his trial (for corruption) in Operation Marquês on July 3, in an urgent case that will be interrupted a few days later for the judicial holiday break. He will then return in September.
This is how SIC Notícias presents the trial that many people predicted would never happen: it has taken almost a decade, and endless appeals, counter appeals, legal arguments and manoeuvres to reach this moment. Thus, it is almost comical that the trial is to begin days before the courts enter their traditional summer recess.
But at least the trial has a start date.
The date was determined by the judge now in charge of the case, Susana Seca, at a meeting at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, which Sócrates did not attend, says SIC.
Mr Sócrates’ defence is still maintaining that the case has not gone beyond the pre-trial stage, and that therefore “there can be no trial”.
This justification was given in a note sent to SIC in which the former prime minister accused the courts of wanting to keep the case alive at all costs.
It could equally be argued that the former PM wants to eke the case into the oblivion of judicial time limits at all costs, hence the number of appeals he has lodged over the last 10 years.
Arrested on November 21, 2014 at Lisbon airport, José Sócrates was the first former head of government to be remanded in custody in Portugal. He spent 288 days in Évora prison and a further 42 days under house arrest, before being released to continue fighting for his total vindication from a position of freedom.
José Sócrates is the main defendant and will be tried for three offences of corruption, 13 of money laundering and six of fraud.
The case also targets Ricardo Salgado (former head of the BES/ GES financial empire, but now suffering from Alzheimer’s), Armando Vara (former Socialist minister and already jailed for other offences), Carlos Santos Silva (a lifelong friend) and Hélder Bataglia (Portuguese-Angolan entrepreneur).
As he left the courtroom today, Ricardo Salgado’s lawyer said that his client should not be tried “when he can’t defend himself”, recalling a ruling by the Coimbra Court of Appeal that maintains that “a person suffering from Alzheimer’s who can’t defend himself can’t be tried”.
Rui Patrício, Hélder Bataglia’s lawyer, however, says that he sees the date for the start of the trial as ‘normal’.
“I see it as normal, it was the date that was found. I don’t see anything special – this is a process like any other. Treating this process as if it were from Mars, that seems very negative to me,” he said.
No-one appears to have mentioned anything about Mars today. It is simply that finally a case that has never been far from ‘headlines’, for various reasons, is now finally scheduled to go to trial.
In the early days, José Sócrates was accused of 31 counts of receiving bribes, money laundering, falsifying documents and tax fraud. However, in an investigative decision on April 9 2021, Judge Ivo Rosa cleared the former PS secretary-general of 25 of the 31 crimes, pronouncing him for trial for only three crimes of money laundering and three of document forgery.
In January last year, a decision by the Lisbon Court of Appeal almost entirely reinstated the original indictment and ordered 22 defendants to stand trial for 118 economic and financial offences, revoking Judge Ivo Rosa’s decision.
