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Judge Ivo Rosa was forced by the Lisbon Court of Appeals to include in his analysis and decision on the investigation phase of the case known as Operation Marqués, in which a former prime minister is charged for the first time, in the case of José Socrates. statements by businessman Hélder Bataglia when he was questioned in another judicial process.
In addition to being charged with Operation Marqués, where he is responsible for ten crimes (five for money laundering, two for falsifying documents, two for tax fraud and one for breach of trust), The Portuguese-Angolan was also charged in the Monte Branco case and it is the testimony provided by this action that led to a sentence of two judges of the Court of Appeals in which they annulled a decision of the magistrate responsible for the investigation phase of Operation Marquis.
Heard in the context of Monte Branco (where the crimes of money laundering, fraud and tax fraud were investigated by the Public Ministry) Hélder Bataglia will have given explanations about the period in which he directed the ESCOM company and represented the Espírito Santo Group in Africa.
He also spoke to prosecutors about some companies. offshore such as OVERVIEW INVESTMENTS and GREEN EMERALD INVESTMENT LTD, which are mentioned in the Marquês Operation.
According to the prosecution, it also assumed that businessman Ricardo Salgado (accused of 21 crimes) asked him to use bank accounts to bring 12 million euros to Carlos Santos Silva, the friend of the former prime minister. who is accused by the Public Ministry of 33 crimes and of being the one who sent these funds to the former president, who is charged with 31 crimes: three of passive corruption of a political office holder, 16 of money laundering, nine of falsification. documents and three tax fraud.
It is these statements in the Monte Branco case that are now at the center of this decision of the Court of Appeal. Judge Ivo Rosa, who led the investigation phase and now must decide who of the 28 defendants in Operation Marqués (19 companies and nine people) goes to trial and maintains or alters the crimes charged to him, it had announced that it would withdraw this statement from the file because it considered that since it had been delivered in another file it did not count for Operation Marqués.
The prosecution, headed by the prosecutor Rosário Teixeira, challenged that decision and now the sentence of the judges of the 5th Section of the Court of Appeals is known that annuls the order of Ivo Rosa and that considers Bataglia’s statements as evidence in the process .
In the document to which the DN had access, the two TRL magistrates who signed it affirm that the decision of the investigating judge “It reveals the confusion of legal concepts, competence and functions of the investigating judge, which is the reason for the sole ruling on the issue that was not even raised and is now subject to appeal.”
For the authors of the order, the “contested decision [a de Ivo Rosa] it confuses concepts and possibilities of proof and is a failure of the perception that, in this phase of instruction, it is an evidentiary proof, without realizing that what is at stake is the same object of proof and not the same process ”.
In other words, the one who will have to decide whether Bataglia’s statements should be evaluated in court is the judge who will be in charge of this phase of the process and not Ivo Rosa. “The assessment of a certain evidence in the trial stage is a different matter than the possibility of using the same evidence in the investigation or investigation stage, where the formulation of an accusation sentence is at stake ”, they explain.
Likewise, they recall that Hélder Bataglia’s statements were made before the defendant’s attorney “and in accordance with the legal formalities provided for in articles 141 and 143 (1) and (2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, – in one or another process, for facts that are expressly included in the accusation in these files, they are legally admissible as evidence and can be evaluated in the context of an accusation under investigation. “
The accused
Currently the defendants in Operation Marqués await the appointment by Ivo Rosa of the date to be informed of his decision on the investigation after the judge said at the last hearing that he would not “schedule a date to read the decision.” since It is “humanly possible” to make a decision within the legal term of ten days, taking into account the volume and complexity of the process.
“For now we will not set a date for the reading of the instructional decision, and it will be announced in due course,” he revealed on July 3.
In this process, in which the prosecutor Rosário Teixeira asks all the defendants to go to trial, the former prime minister José Sócrates is accused of passive corruption of a politician, money laundering, falsification of documents and qualified tax fraud.
The Public Ministry maintains that Socrates received around 34 million euros, between 2006 and 2015, in exchange for favoring the interests of former banker Ricardo Salgado in GES and PT, as well as to guarantee the granting of CGD financing to the Vale project. do Lobo, in the Algarve, and favor the business of the Lena Group.
The former administrator of the Lena Joaquim Barroca Group, Armando Vara, the former minister and former administrator of CGD, Henrique Granadeiro (former director of the PT), as well as Zeinal Bava, and José Paulo Pinto de Sousa (Socrates’ cousin), among others.
