The husband of the Secretary of State for Fisheries, Madeiran Cláudia Monteiro de Aguiar, is being investigated by the Judiciary Police, according to Correio da Manhã.
According to the CM, the investigation was initiated following a complaint related to the project of a technological application for tourism that Mobinteg, a company of which the governor’s husband is a founder and partner, prepared for the Institute of Forests and Conservation of Nature (IFCN) of Madeira.
Fernando Pinto was heard as a witness, in February, as part of this investigation. Confronted with the situation, Cláudia Aguiar clarified that “he was heard as a witness. My husband is not a defendant in any case at all.”
Asked by the CM whether she had declared in the questionnaire that government officials have to answer, before taking office, that her husband had been heard by the PJ, the Secretary of State stated that “I didn’t have to declare absolutely anything”.
Fernando Pinto’s partner declared to the aforementioned newspaper that “Mobinteg is always available to provide clarifications to judicial and journalistic sources. The company and its partners are not defendants in any process”, assured Pedro Geraldes.
The process is related to a prototype project for a technological application for use for tourism purposes, Smiity, which Mobinteg developed for the IFCN in 2017. According to the CM, the complaint raised suspicions about the way in which the company, headquartered in Lisbon, he established contact with the IFCN, particularly with the possible role of Cláudia Aguiar in this operation.
On the part of the Regional Secretariat of Agriculture, it was responded that “the extinct Regional Secretariat for Environment and Climate Change did not enter into any public contract” with Mobinteg”. The Regional Secretariat for Tourism and Culture also guaranteed that “there was no dialogue with the Secretary of State Cláudia Monteiro de Aguiar, before or after she assumed government functions regarding businesses or commercial companies in which Fernando Pinto was a partner and/or head of the respective bodies of management or administration”.