At a point where the agonising ‘favoritism scandal’ affecting president Marcelo would appear to have ‘died down’ enough for him to complete his final mandate and retire from public life, a new twist has been thrown into the public space: the mother of the twins who received ‘multi-million euro miracle treatment’ free of charge on the national health service (when they were born and lived in Brazil) is said to be suing the doctor, and the journalists who broke the story in the first place.
For readers unfamiliar with this subject, it centres on twin babies with a congenital disease whose mother allegedly ‘pulled strings’ to get them treated in Portugal.
The strings were described as being pulled from the very ‘top’ of Portugal’s power pyramid. Their exposure caused enormous trouble and strife, not least within the family of President Marcelo himself.
Earlier this year, the parliamentary inquiry convened to investigate what really went on concluded that ‘yes, there had been a “special intervention by the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic” but no illegality could be found.
This conclusion was hastily announced after the special rapporteur attached to CHEGA – the party that requested the commission – issued her own conclusions, which were a great deal less charitable.
But since then, ‘nothing’: the Public Prosecutions Service is said to be conducting an investigation, but it is apparently doing so discreetly.
Today, however, Correio da Manhã runs an ‘exclusive’ on the criminal complaint being lodged by the twins’ mother Daniela Martins against the sources of the ‘story’: doctor António Levy Gomes, investigative reporter Sandra Felgueiras, and Brazilian journalist Nelson Garrone.
Although it is presented as ‘news’, the criminal complaint apparently goes back to the time the scandal broke (2023).
At issue are alleged crimes of defamation and slander, breach of professional secrecy (by the doctor), violation of personal data through illegal recordings and photographs, invasion of privacy and psychological abuse of minors.
Daniela Martins’ lawyer, Wilson Bicalho, says that the amount to be claimed has not been defined, but it will not be linked to the cost of treatment (which is understood to have come to somewhere in the region of €3 million – €4 million).
If nothing else, this story is an example of how a ‘scandal’ can end up hurting everyone, including the people who expose it. Will it have been worth it? Certainly, the ‘good news’ is that the little girls who were treated with the miracle drug Zolgensma, for spinal muscular atrophy, are well, and developing well, according to Wilson Bicalho. They could not “return” to any kind of life in Portugal, he stresses, “because of everything that has happened”.
Source material: Correio da Manhã/ SIC Notícias
