Today was tipped as the day a judge would decide on whether or not the bombshell decision reached by Judge Ivo Rosa over Operation Marquês almost three years ago was the correct interpretation of the facts, or whether he rode roughshod over public prosecutors’ years of evidence gathering, as prosecutors say he did. The decision was meant to come at 2.30pm but it was held up for hours before the announcement that former Socialist prime minister José Sócrates is indeed to face many more criminal charges, as per the original public prosecutor investigation: 22 in fact – three charges of bribery, 13 of money laundering, and six of fraud. It is almost a decade since Marquês broke with the arrest of José Sócrates as he touched down in Lisbon by plane from Paris. Back then, pundits suggested the endless column inches of allegations would all, effectively, come to very little. There was talk of ‘lapsing of judicial time limits’. Today’s news takes the case into new territory, with Sócrates already saying he will be appealing to whichever court he is able to appeal to.
Former PM José Sócrates to face 22 charges from original Marquês case
