Days after the explosive ‘final debate’ of the presidential campaign – the moment Gouveia e Melo ‘turned the proverbial screws’ on PSD adversary Luís Marques Mendes – Sábado has broken the story that public prosecutors are investigating ‘direct contracts’ approved for the Navy when the former admiral was in charge.
There seems to be little in the way of coincidence here: this is all part of the ‘dirtiest presidential campaign in the history of Portuguese democracy’. Voters will be hard pressed to understand the vitriol that has been flying this far – and the country is still almost three weeks away from the elections, scheduled for January 18 and expected to be ‘inconclusive’.
The understanding is that two candidates will poll more votes than the nine others in the field – and these will then have to ‘face off’ against each other in a subsequent national vote in February.
Two-vote presidential elections are rare, but they have happened in the past (in 1986).
In the meantime, the heat is on: if a new ‘poll’ isn’t published this week, there will surely be one next.
The nation’s media is focused on this last election in the space of less than a year as if the presidency was ‘the most crucial role’ in Portuguese politics (which it truly is not).
Thus Sábado’s ‘revelations’ – that 57 contracts made with the company Proskipper when Gouveia e Melo was in charge – are being presented as ‘potentially explosive’ and ‘something new (and clearly fishy)’.
The small print shows otherwise: this is an issue that has already been through the courts …
Sábado goes over old ground: these contracts were signed between 2017 and 2022 – and in 2024 the Court of Auditors ‘pardoned any financial infractions’ that may have existed.
The case however, no. 40/17 reportedly remains as an inquiry still open at DIAP (the department of Investigation and Penal Action) in Almada.
According to Sábado, the initial investigation was in the hands of the PJM (the military judicial police) which delivered its final report to public prosecutors four years ago. “Among other conclusions, investigators detected an excessive concentration of direct contracts with the company Proskipper, later dissolved (in October of 2022). The PJM identified 57 suspicious contracts which were approved by the current presidential candidate.“
In one of the contracts analysed, relating to the purchase of inflatable life jackets, PJM noted that two of the companies consulted, Proskipper and ZMP-Service Center, Lda., shared the same managing partner, and the former held a 50% stake in the latter’s share capital. A third company consulted, Smart Marine, Unipessoal, did not have the technical qualifications to market such equipment. Result: Proskipper ended up being the only one to submit a bid and win the contract.”
According to ‘judicial sources’ (Sábado’s description) “investigators considered the facts established MAY constitute a crime, despite the fact that this was ‘exonerated’ by the Court of Auditors, which assessed financial responsibility”.
When questioned by SÁBADO as to whether Gouveia e Melo had already been heard in this investigation and in what capacity, the Attorney General’s Office declined to clarify anything, says the magazine, adding that ”Gouveia e Melo’s presidential campaign made it known that the candidate never made any statements, nor was he notified to do so, in the DIAP investigation in Almada.”
But in response to the Court of Auditors’ audit, Gouveia e Melo stated that, although his role as Naval Commander required it, “verifying the legal requirements attached to all pre-contractual procedures that gave rise to the issuance of invoices (…) is a Herculean task for any head of an organisation with a structure as robust and dynamic as the Naval Command”.
Thus, the bottom line: between 2010 and 2018, Proskipper celebrated 137 contracts with the state – of which 124 were signed with the Navy. The company made €2.1 million with the contracts made with the Navy, which represented 80% of its turnover with the public sector. But, as Sábado also makes clear, there was a history of ‘direct contracts’ celebrated by the Navy when Gouveia e Melo was in charge – and it was precisely because of direct contracts that “a few years earlier, (he) was directly involved in a case that ended with the dismissal of then Vice-Admiral Cunha Lopes, at the time Director-General of the Maritime Authority”, which involved suspicions by three judges of the Lisbon Court of Appeal of internal differences, corruption and other serious accusations.
The vice-admiral ended up taking legal action against Gouveia e Melo and other Navy top-brass, but little appears to have come of it beyond the fact that it was clear that there were internal animosities within the Naval high command, and a degree of ‘game playing’.
In other words, what is being repeated by other news sources today – citing Sábado – is a kind of ‘old news’ stressed up to sound new and potentially scurrilous, and almost certainly a tactic to try and undermine any advantage that Gouveia e Melo may be hanging onto.
Sources: Sábado/ SIC Notícias
