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Five secret meetings at the highest level, documents that were to be destroyed after reading them, a president and a general director of the Court of Accounts (ToC) negotiating with a government how to overcome a decision of that same court and four members of the Executive of José Socrates to confirm that the advisor Jose Tavares was a fundamental piece to find a solution that, according to the financial expertise of the Judicial Police (PJ), had a potential loss of 3,500 million euros for the Portuguese State at the time the renegotiations of the ex-SCUT concessions were formalized (466 million euros) and the final sub-concession agreements (3.1 billion euros). Below is a summary of what appears in the 14 volumes of the survey on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) that the Observer consulted in recent days.
The new president of TdC confirmed in the 2019 records that he participated in two of these five meetings, which will have taken place at the official residence of S. Bento then occupied by José Sócrates, one of which was even summoned by Guilherme Dray, then Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. José Tavares assured the Public Ministry that he “told” the governors of Socrates what he “always” said to all the members of the public institutions who had contacted him in 25 years as director general of the Court of Accounts: “The only way to overcome situations The refusal is to eliminate the illegalities indicated in the decisions of the Court, that is, with regard to procedural defects and others ”.
The problem is that the former minister Mario Lino, the former secretary of state Carlos Costa Pina me Marquis of Almerindo, then president of the public concessionaire Estradas de Portugal, denies the new president of the Court appointed this week by António Costa (with the approval of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa), then the non-reelection of Vítor Caldeira (the first non-reelected leader) .
New President of the Court of Auditors mentioned in APP survey
The PPP process, which investigates crimes such as corruption, economic participation in business and other illegal acts, already has 12 defendants constituted, among them Mário Lino (former Minister of Public Works), Fernando Teixeira dos Santos (former Minister of Finance), Paulo Campos (former Secretary of State for Public Works), Carlos Costa Pina (former Secretary of State for Finance), Almerindo Marques (former President of Estradas de Portugal) and seven more administrators and directors of EP.
In 2009 at least five secret meetings were held at the highest level between the Court of Accounts and various members of the Government of José Sócrates to try to evade the leadership of the financial watchdog in PPP contracts. José Tavares participated in almost all of them. This is the number reached when reading the inquiries of José Tavares, Mário Lino, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, Carlos Costa Costa Pina and Almerindo Marques in the PPP file.
And everyone clearly mentions the role of José Tavares in how the Government was able to evade the leadership of the Tribuanal de Contas to the PPP.
Consulted on May 21, 2013 by the Judicial Police (PJ), Carlos Costa Pina, Secretary of State for Finance of the Government of Socrates, said that José Tavares was appointed by Guilherme Oliveira Martins, then president of the Court of Accounts, as “Preferential interlocutor” with “the aim of helping the EP to find a technical solution that will overcome the obstacle posed by visa denial”.
