A long post, and I don’t understand a lot of this myself. This will go on for a lot longer I think, as more and more is said, it seems there are lots or inconsistencies in it all. Let’s also remember that on the day of the arrests Albuquerque said “it would have to rain pocket knives for his resignation” but then the very nice day he resigned.
Below a straight translation.
The president of the Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses defended today that the Public Prosecutor’s Office should “explain what happened” in the Madeira case in which the criminal investigation judge concluded that there was no evidence of a crime.
Manuel Soares spoke to the Lusa news agency about the difference in assessment of the evidence between the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) and the criminal investigation judge who, on Wednesday, let the former man go free with an identity and residence permit (TIR). -Mayor of Funchal Pedro Calado and two businessmen detained three weeks ago for questioning following suspicions of corruption and other serious crimes in Madeira.
“Should the MP, in whatever way he sees fit, explain what happened? In my opinion, yes!” declared judge Manuel Soares, recalling that, after the searches in Madeira, there was a “press conference by the national director of the Judiciary Police [Luís Neves] explaining the reasons for the operation” and the its “logistical complexity”.
Understanding, however, that, at the time, this explanation should have been given by the MP, because he is the one conducting the investigation, the president of the Judges’ Union Association said that given Wednesday’s court decision “likely to create social alarm”, it was “ It is important that the MP reassures people about his actions.
At a time when it is legitimate for people to think that the MP may have acted hastily in this investigation, Manuel Soares understands that “a communicational intervention” by the MP was justified, namely to say that “he will appeal and calmly await the decision of the Court of Resource [Relation] so that people could understand the logic of the MP’s actions”.
In his opinion, a process that “has this fluctuating and barely understandable pace [for people] naturally needs explanation”, particularly from the MP.
The president of the Judges’ Union Association also noted that the Madeira process “has aspects that make it rare”, one of them being the fact that there is “such a big difference between an assessment made by the MP in conjunction with the police” on the matter evidence that led to the detention of the three defendants for interrogation and then, on the opposite side, a “judicial decision that the evidence submitted to him does not exist”.
Although this procedural stage is provisional, Manuel Soares recognizes that “objectively, looking at the case, it is easy to say that one of the assessments has to be wrong”, also admitting that the situation under analysis has “contours of abnormality and exceptionality”, with the interrogation taking 21 days to complete.
Faced with public criticism regarding the exaggeration of human and logistical resources used on the day of the arrests and searches in Madeira. Manuel Soares de-dramatised the issue, saying that “the fact that there was a greater apparatus in the police operation means nothing” .
“It just means that the MP and the police needed those means to carry out the steps they wanted to carry out”, he insisted.
Manuel Soares admitted that if the court considers that there is no evidence and the people are not accused and are acquitted, these people have the right to ask the State to be compensated for the damages caused to them by the fact that they were 21 days deprived of freedom.
According to the order of judge Jorge Bernardes de Melo, of the Central Criminal Instruction Court, in Lisbon, the less serious precautionary measure was applied to the former president of the municipality of Funchal Pedro Calado, as well as to businessmen Avelino Farinha, leader of the construction group AFA, and Custódio Correia, main shareholder of the group linked to civil construction Socicorreia.
Days earlier, the MP had requested preventive detention, the most serious measure, for the three defendants.
On January 24, the PJ carried out around 130 home and non-home searches, mainly in Madeira, but also in the Azores and in various areas of the continent, as part of a process that investigates suspicions of active and passive corruption, economic participation in business , malfeasance, receiving or offering an undue advantage, abuse of powers and influence peddling.
The investigation also affected the then president of the Regional Government of Madeira (PSD/CDS-PP), Miguel Albuquerque, who was named a defendant and ended up resigning from his position, which resulted in the dismissal of the Madeiran executive.