Former PSD leader Rui Rio said in an interview with SIC that he joked about the search for his house on Wednesday, “to show the ridiculousness of what happened”.
And he added: “Seriously speaking, what we are talking about is a practice that has always been transversal to all parties, in the 1980s they were like that. And I would like to know why only the PSD and within the PSD it mandate from 2018 to 2021, during the time I was president”.
“The parties have two types of funds: one because they had more than 50,000 votes in the elections, the other because they have a parliamentary faction. And very important: the parliamentary faction is a party organ! WHO works at headquarters or in the parliamentary group works for the party”.
Both funds are sent by the President of the Assembly of the Republic. It is the duty of political parties to manage these funds strictly and seriously, and not as the Public Prosecution Service says it does not know how to manage the funds,” said Rui Rio in SIC’s Jornal da Noite.
In the same interview, the former leader of the PSD illustrated that an adviser who is in an area, how the health environment is set up, what the prosecution says if I have an adviser for that area in the parliamentary group, I have to get another one in the same area at the party headquarters, which is absolutely absolute”.
When asked if a common practice is correct, Rui Rio replied by giving another example: “The house of the Press Secretary, Flobela Guedes, was searched because she received half her salary at the Assembly of the Republic and the other half at national headquarters”.
It is recalled that this week, on Wednesday, the Judicial Police (PJ) carried out this search of the house of the former president of the PSD, Rui Rio, in Porto, as well as the national headquarters of the party in Lisbon. These are suspicions of crimes such as embezzlement and abuse of power due to alleged misuse of public funds, in particular of the Assembly of the Republic.
On the same day, while searches were taking place at his home, Rui Rio indicated that he had not been charged and that the investigation was aimed at tarnishing his image. “I’m tired of this,” Rui Rio responded at the time.
As early as Thursday, at the end of the day, the president of the republic said that there is a gray area in the legislation. “I remember when I was PSD leader, the law was different, in fact, it has changed many times since the beginning of the century, but since this problem, which has consequences, for example, the faction can decide the vote, or there are things that can decide the vote,” he said.
“This dual nature makes it very difficult to know the day-to-day operation and financing”. And he added: the funding legislation changed in 2010 and it has since stipulated that deputies receive funding for different purposes. And the latest version of 2015 states that each group is allocated an amount for consultancy costs to deputies and for political and party activities. It remains a gray area, and that is where the possibility of introducing the costs of the advisory activity comes into play,” he told journalists. can,” he explained.
(updated)
Source: DN
