… while investigation opens on how press got to hear about it
The Attorney General’s Office has confirmed today that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into violation of state secrecy following the seizure, in the Operation Influencer process (that led to the fall of an absolutely majority Socialist government) of a pen drive containing a list of intelligence agents.
It was Sábado magazine that reported (also today) that in November 2023 when searches were going ahead at the then prime minister’s official residence, a pen drive containing the identification and other personal data of hundreds of agents from the Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), Strategic Intelligence and Defence Service (SIED), Judicial Police (PJ) and Tax Authority (AT) was seized from a safe in the office of Vítor Escária, the former chief of staff of PS Prime Minister António Costa, now the president of the European Council.
“It is confirmed that, in relation to the facts now reported, an investigation was opened in November 2024 at the DCIAP [Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action]”, an official source from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), has told Lusa. But it should have been kept under ‘judicial secrecy’ (a ‘cardinal rule’ that is invariably broken when there is intense media interest).
According to Sábado, Vítor Escária claims he was unaware of the contents of the pen drive and that it arrived at the PM’s official residence with his predecessor.
António Costa’s lawyer has also impressed that his client has “absolutely no knowledge of what this is about.
“At no time was my client confronted with the existence of this alleged pen or its content, as he was completely unaware of what it was about,” João Lima Cluny has told Lusa.
Operation Influencer led to the arrests of Vítor Escária, lawyer and consultant Diogo Lacerda Machado, directors of the company Start Campus Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, and the mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas. It also precipitated the collapse of the government – and legislative elections that did away with eight years of socialism.
Also defendants in Influencer are former Minister of Infrastructure João Galamba, former president of the Portuguese Environment Agency, Nuno Lacasta, lawyer João Tiago Silveira and Start Campus.
The process was later separated into three inquiries, related to the construction of a data center in the industrial and logistics zone of Sines by Start Campus, the exploration of lithium in Montalegre and Boticas (both districts of Vila Real), and the production of energy from hydrogen in Sines.
All defendants have denied that they committed any crimes. Indeed, following to his resignation on November 7, 2023, António Costa gave an impromptu press conference four days later in which he explained that ‘this was the way business was conducted in Portugal’: there was nothing illegal in any of it.
