With the prime suspect in the criminal sphere of Operation Marquês apparently playing the system for all its worth, one of the other ‘principal defendants’ is being put through the judicial process even though his defence team has repeatedly explained that he gets lost in his own home.
The ‘mega corruption case’ that has been in and out of the headlines for the last 12 years is increasingly taking on dark pantomime proportions.
Former Socialist prime minister José Sócrates – the central protagonist – has been ‘going through lawyers’ at a pace since his original lawyer ‘threw in the sponge’ late last year in what was widely seen as yet another delay tactic. It seems to have worked: the last lawyer appointed to ‘defend’ Mr Sócrates lasted all of 18 minutes in court and has since ‘quit’. She had requested five months to study the case, and was given just 10 days.
Now, former banker Ricardo Salgado – suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for some years already – has lost his appeal for the case against him to be abandoned (due to his inability to defend himself, or even answer questions coherently).
Appeal court judges rejected the arguments put forward (that a court in Castelo Branco had thrown out a case of another patient diagnosed with dementia), ruling that Mr Salgado – already condemned to eight years behind bars for breach of trust, and facing charges over the collapse of the BES private banking empire – must be tried. If he is eventually ‘condemned to years behind bars’, the Alzheimer’s diagnosis may then be taken into account.
Mr Salgado’s defence team has repeatedly criticised what it sees as the persecution of Mr Salgado when he is in no fit state to even understand what is going on.
Source: Lusa
