Former BES boss was seeking to have jail term deemed unconstitutional
Portugal’s Constitutional Court has rejected an appeal filed on behalf of former banking boss Ricardo Salgado, seeking to have his eight year sentence for breach of trust declared unconstitutional due to his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
The decision, reported today by SIC, concerns the appeal filed by the banker’s defence team, which has said a jail sentence will kill him. In legal terms, they argue that “fundamental principles of human dignity, proportionality and guarantees of criminal proceedings and, also, the right to health” are at stake.
In the decision, judges – whose rapporteur was judge Rui Guerra da Fonseca – determined “not to take cognisance of the subject of this appeal” and sentenced Ricardo Salgado to pay legal costs in the amount of €2,040.
In other words, the court refused even to consider the appeal.
Sentenced in March 2022 to a single sentence of six years in prison for three crimes of breach of trust, Ricardo Salgado saw the Lisbon Court of Appeal increase the sentence to eight years in May 2023. His defence lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) which confirmed the eight-year sentence, but imposed a prior assessment of Salgado’s health status before he could serve his sentence.
This ruling was highlighted by the collective of Constitutional Court advisors, who said that the possibility of suspending the sentence was not denied by the STJ, and therefore the application of the article of the Penal Code that provides for this possibility in cases of mental anomaly of defendants sentenced to effective imprisonment is not at stake.
In February 2024, a ruling by the STJ declared that the assessment of whether Ricardo Salgado’s health condition justifies the suspension of the sentence must be made before the sentence begins to be served, that is, before the former banker enters prison.
It follows from this judgment that there now will have to be a new assessment and/ or medical evaluation of Mr Salgado’s health status before the court of first instance can verify whether or not he is able to understand the sentence; whether or not he is able to serve it and whether it makes any sense to serve it.
Contacted by Lusa, Ricardo Salgado’s defense declined to comment, writes Lusa today.
The former banker’s defence lawyers have said in the past that “putting a defendant with Alzheimer’s disease in prison is tantamount to ordering his death sentence“. Indeed, they have suggested that the only reason Mr Salgado is facing eight years behind bars is that he is who he is – or at least was.
Mr Salgado’s wife has given a poignant description of the condition of her husband today, insisting that he cannot possibly face a jail term.
Source material: Lusa
