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Lucília Gago decided that hierarchical superiors can give orders and instructions to subordinates in specific processes. Union warns that the new hierarchical instrument “opens the door to political interference in the criminal investigation.”
The Union of Magistrates of the Public Ministry (SMMP) decided this Tuesday to request a hearing from the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to “publicize” the consequences of the new directive of the Attorney General of the Republic, Lucília Gago, that allows hierarchical superiors to give subordinates “orders and instructions that are intended to have an effect on a given process.”
In practice, what the union chaired by António Ventinhas wants is for the President of the Republic, responsible for the appointment of the head of the Attorney General, to convince Lucília Gago to repeal Directive No. 4/2020, issued last Thursday. . From the point of view of the SMMP leadership, this directive “limits the autonomy of the prosecutor and his magistrates and opens the door to political interference in the criminal investigation.”
As the SMMP says in a statement issued at the end of a meeting of its leaders, this directive “essentially reaffirms the content of Directive 1/2020.” This generated a great stir in February of this year, which did not lack the public intervention of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. “What the PR says is that the MP is autonomous,” Marcelo said then, after the union considered that the directive offended the MP’s autonomy.
Four days later, the attorney general suspended the effects of the February directive and asked her Advisory Council for a complementary opinion, which would evaluate, above all, if the aforementioned orders and instructions would not be drawn up in the process.
“Parallel actions outside the law”
This supplementary opinion is not yet known, but it will be the basis of the directive issued last week. This is consistent with the previous directive in that it authorizes prosecutors with a coordinating or directing role to give orders and instructions to subordinates, such as whether or not to conduct a search or wiretapping, detain or not detain a suspect.
The novelty of the last directive is that it establishes that “the orders and instructions that are intended to have effect in a certain process, and that do not constitute procedural acts in the proper sense, are always reduced to writing and registered by the hierarchy that issues them on file “. preparation and follow-up, already established or to be established “.
The union, which in February challenged the concealment of orders and instructions, now speaks of “creating parallel processes (…) outside the law,” which “discredits the MP and compromises its image of transparency,” it adds.
But the essence of the criticism continues to be directed at the mere possibility that the holders of the process receive the aforementioned orders and instructions, considering that this “is not compatible with the MP as a magistracy and violates the new Statute of the Chief Public Ministry.” .
“I am the law”
“Process owners are the people who know them best, especially when investigations are high in volume or complexity, so any hasty hierarchical intervention (possibly conditioned by factors external to the process) can compromise or weaken investigations,” he says. the SMMP, saying that this is exactly what “some recent cases demonstrate, namely the Tancos process.”
During the investigation of the theft and recovery of war material from the Tancos warehouses, the holders of the investigation wanted to inquire into the Prime Minister, António Costa, and the President of the Republic, but the director of the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action, Albano . Pinto did not authorize these steps.
The new directive legitimizes this type of situation, and the SMMP defends that “leadership is not imposed by the use of force.” Especially because, from their perspective, the aforementioned orders or instructions have no place in the MP Statute or in the Criminal Procedure Code. “The PGR replaced the legislator, completely subverting the balance that was intended to be achieved through criminal procedural norms,” says the union, insisting on the accusation of alleged authoritarianism against Lucília Gago: “We cannot accept living in a state where La PGR thinks that “I am the law” “.
In addition to the audience with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the union will also request an audience with parliamentary groups and other parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic, will convene an Extraordinary Assembly of Union Delegates and will hold a conference to discuss the autonomy of the Public Ministry in the criminal process.
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