PSD MP is also under investigation by European Prosecutor over suspicions of receiving ‘kickbacks’ while mayor of Bragança
While the country was collectively chortling over the CHEGA MP outed for allegedly stealing random suitcases from airport carousels – and selling the contents over the internet – another potential political scandal was being broken by RTP (the state broadcaster).
According to RTP, former PSD mayor of Bragança Hernâni Dias set up two companies that could benefit from the new land law while the ministry he works for was drawing it up.
The companies – jointly owned by himself, his wife and children – have been described as dedicated to property development/ management and tourism (MCRH Singular Lda) and buying and selling property and reselling it (Prumo Esquadria e Perspetiva, Lda).
While none of this, per se, is illegal, it suggests what anti-corruption policy consultant João Pedro Batalha describes as “a pornographic conflict of interest.
“At the same time that he’s changing the laws (Land Law), which directly involve urban planning and property construction – he is creating a company that can benefit from these laws that his Ministry is designing,” Batalha has told reporters.
Dias however has explained that the companies “are two family situations” and that “none of these projects have anything to do with the land law”.
In the febrile political situation, however, few seem mollified by this assurance.
Left wingers are already calling for his resignation, and even PSD supporters have been left questioning the MP’s motives.
It has not helped that RTP has also revealed that Hernâni Dias is under investigation by the European Prosecutor’s Office over suspicions that he may have received kickbacks when he was mayor of Bragança (2013-2024).
The situation centres on an apartment in Porto, occupied by Dias’ son and other fellow university students, which happens to be in the name of the son of one of the partners in a construction company that won the tender for extending Bragança’s industrial estate…
Again, Dias has denied that any kind of illegalities, stressing that his “conscience is absolutely tranquil” and that he acted in this particular situation “with total transparency”.
“I am convinced that I acted with total transparency and within the law […] and I have an absolutely clear conscience,” he said in a statement sent to Lusa news agency, showing that he was “at the disposal of the competent authorities to provide all clarifications”.
Dias adds that he has asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) “to investigate the contract for the Industrial Zone in Bragança and LNEC [National Civil Engineering Laboratory] to carry out an audit”, assuring, with regard to the apartment occupied by his son, that “the rents were paid by bank transfer, in accordance with the contract”.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
