Armando Vara is already serving time for influence peddling and money laundering
The Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) has increased former Socialist minister Armando Vara’s prison sentence to five years and six months, in a legal combination of sentences handed down in the Face Oculta and Operação Marquês cases.
According to the STJ judgement, to which Lusa has today had access, judges upheld the appeal by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP), which wanted the former minister to be sentenced to at least five and a half years in prison – up from the court’s decision in March 2023, which had imposed a sentence of five years and only one month in prison.
Armando Vara was sentenced to five years in prison as part of the Face Oculta case, for three offences of influence peddling. He fought the conviction for years before finally admitting defeat and presenting himself to Évora prison in October 2021. The Covid pandemic then saw him released, due to ‘exceptional measures’ adopted for prisoners, after serving two years and nine months – but, in the meantime, a court delivered a two-year sentence for money laundering in the Operation Marquês case, which saw him once again back behind bars in March 2023.
Source material: LUSA
