Early yesterday evening, Portugal’s public prosecutor’s office announced that it had archived the ‘preliminary investigation’ into the ‘Spinumviva’ case (that brought down Luís Montenegro’s first AD government) as it could find no ‘evidence of the commission of a criminal offence’.
This was ‘music to the ears’ of the PSD-CDS/PP coalition which has always insisted that there was and is ‘nothing to see’ in any of the suspicions raised by opposition parties.
Opposition parties however are only grudgingly accepting the news.
The bottom line nonetheless – in the eyes of PSD secretary general Hugo Soares – is that Luís Montenegro can now be seen as he has always said that he is: “serious” and “bullet proof” when it comes to any whiffs of irregularity.
Mr Montenegro himself ‘addressed the nation’ at 8pm, clearly vindicated, but still furious by the way this situation has been handled.
He described the intensity of the probe undertaken against him and his family, suggesting it went far further than legally admissible.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office, assisted by the Judicial Police, conducted a preliminary investigation which, in practice, was a full-blown criminal investigation, given the scope of the measures taken and the evidence examined.
“In this regard, I invoke my status as a practising lawyer to attest that, in a certain sense, it went further than what is normally admissible in an investigation, since the targets accepted a total reversal of the burden of proof, and some of the evidence requested and made available would have been rejected by an investigating judge if it had not been authorised by him.”
A leader with a dim view of the press already, the PM used the moment to go on the attack, stressing that “it is not newspaper headlines or the opening of investigations into unfounded, almost always anonymous, allegations that drive politics and democracy. Politics is driven by the people and those whom the people choose as their legitimate representatives.
“Those who exceed the limits of their status and function, those who exceed the limits of rules and truth, fall into totalitarian temptation. And totalitarianism can affect thinking and conduct in politics, journalism and the judiciary.”
For the AD coalition this was a ‘perfect moment’, leaving all the other parties who had joined the ‘baying fray’ to hastily mumble something about ‘justice having been seen to be done’ – or not: LIVRE and PCP communists for example ‘still think there are ethical questions to answer’, while the PS last night was a silent as the proverbial grave.
It has taken months for this ‘preliminary investigation’ by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to come to its conclusion – which came almost in tandem with a similar investigation conducted by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), following a complaint filed by former Socialist MEP Ana Gomes, and closed on November 27.
The EPPO’s decision was on exactly the same basis as Portugal’s public prosecutor’s office: no evidence of any criminal offence/s having been committed.
For those who have forgotten the whole thrust of the Spinumviva saga, it focused on payments to the company that were allegedly not owed to it, including payments made when Luís Montenegro was already prime minister. It later expanded to include the purchase made by the PM’s family of two properties in Lisbon. Insinuations centred on “suspicions of the danger of committing the crime of receiving or offering undue advantage”.
Sources: Observador/ Lusa/ SIC Notícias
