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The former Attorney General of the Republic, Joana Marques Vidal, criticized the National Strategy to Combat Corruption (ENCC) 2020-2024 on Tuesday, considering it vague and with relevant omissions, associated with the little importance attributed to international judicial cooperation .
Joana Marques Vidal, current Deputy Attorney General of the Constitutional Court, spoke at the conference of the Lisbon Law School of the Portuguese Catholic University on “State Transparency and the fight against corruption”, in which she said that the strategy is of little importance . international cooperation and omits important issues such as public procurement, urban planning, land planning, and the incompatibilities of public and political office holders.
For the former PGR, the ENCC should have a different formal methodology, giving as an example the absence of the definition of a deadline for the implementation of the measures, in addition to the fact that “no review and evaluation of the document’s own proposals is foreseen” .
“The strategy talks about the measures and what you want to achieve with them, but it is less strong in the chapter on how you want to achieve. I think it is necessary to improve the document in a structural way ”, he said.
Preventive criminal investigations were another topic addressed at the conference, and the attorney general called for the creation of “clear procedures.”
“I believe that a study is necessary for the adoption of a legal framework that defines clear procedures for preventive investigations. There must be some formality for the investigations, such as regulating the competence of the PJ to institute these preventive actions,” he said. the magistrate, admitting that it is “an unstable field that is subject to challenges in the context of the trial.”
The omission of certain topics that it considered important for a national strategy was another of the criticisms mentioned, citing the absence of chapters dedicated to public procurement and urban or territorial planning.
“We should mention the responsibility of public and political positions, local authorities, financing of parties,” observed the magistrate, warning about the absence of a definition of priority points in the fight against corruption and the fact that an evaluation of the application of the legislation and its effectiveness.
Another of the weaknesses of the strategy pointed out by Joana Marques Vidal was the deficient participation of certain entities such as the Assembly of the Republic, that is, in the functions of the commissions, for example transparency.
In the chapter that she called “perplexities”, the magistrate warned of the danger that the prevention mechanism would become “a bureaucratic institution of formal analysis”, a matter that, in her opinion, is not very clear in the document approved by the Council of Ministers, for fear that ENCC is exhausted in legislative changes.
Among the suggestions presented are the instruments for monitoring and auditing public procurement, reminding the former PGR that “many magistrates face late detection of corrupt phenomena,” suggesting the creation of a mechanism to monitor major government issues. State that correcting any irregularity.
The issue of megaprocesses and the slowness of justice were other issues addressed.
“Large-scale prosecutions will continue to be repeated because the crimes are also very serious and there is no way to overcome this. I agree that the connection of the prosecutions can be improved by law, but there are megaprocesses because there are very sophisticated megacrimes, which they involve various international financial institutions and systems, “he said.
According to Joana Marques Vidal “it would be important that the law enshrine the mandatory communication to the MP by the entities that evaluate the income statement whenever a mismatch or mismatch of unjustified enrichment is detected”, in a similar way to what happens with the money laundering. capitals.
For the Public Ministry, the possibility of having courts specialized in economic and financial crimes would also be valued.
