Former Defense Minister João Gomes Cravinho said on Friday that he had “no reason to think” that former governor Marco Capitão Ferreira “is guilty of anything”, and refused to make a “presumption of guilt”.
During the joint hearing with the current Defense Minister, Helena Carreiras, which took place in parliament, the holder of the foreign affairs portfolio rejected the “treacherous comparison” made by the IL deputy, Rodrigo Saraiva, about Alberto Coelho, in compared to the who had said at a parliamentary hearing in February that if he had known what he knows now, he would not have hired him at a public company in the sector.
“In the case of Dr. Alberto Coelho, information came to light that I immediately sent to the Office of the Attorney General. In the case of Professor Marco Capitão Ferreira, there are some question marks that will be duly clarified in the right place and I do not make any assumptions of guilt regarding various insinuations that have been circulating,” the former minister said between 2018 and 2022.
Gomes Cravinho said he had “no reason to think he was guilty of anything but his own fault”.
Cravinho also added that Alberto Coelho wrote an email to the former minister’s chief of staff in January 2019 stating his intention to hire Marco Capitao Ferreira as an adviser.
“It was information that, strictly speaking, I did not have to give. After that, in terms of procedures, dates, values, I had no information and it would not be normal for me to have it,” he added.
Right at the beginning of the hearing, the former defense minister, persistently questioned by PSD deputy Jorge Paulo Oliveira about the entire process involving Marco Capitão Ferreira, Gomes Cravinho refused more than once to “speculate on matters falling within the purview of judicial research”.
Faced with BE deputy Joana Mortágua about a “mutual appointment” between Alberto Coelho and Marco Capitão Ferreira in different companies in the defense universe, Gomes Cravinho stressed that the country “is not huge and, in terms of defense industries”, there a “very small group of people who work in this area”, as it is a “quite specialized” area.
Defense Minister Helena Carreiras, questioned by Chega’s deputy André Ventura, said it was her initiative to invite Marco Capitão Ferreira – with whom he had a “professional relationship” until then – to the position of secretary of state and added admitted that it was not for him to make “a technical assessment of the amounts” or of the “consultancy contract in question”.
Speaking to the PCP, João Dias defended that defense ministers “need to do more than seem very attentive”, not least because “it seems they are very distracted”, questioning why it is only now to move forward with the organic restructuring of the Directorate-General for Defense Resources announced by the Minister at the start of the hearing.
The defense minister believed that this was a troika-era error that needed to be corrected, anticipating that this is a process that “must be very well prepared to deliver the intended results” .
The PS, through Francisco César, emphasized that since the awareness of this case, the government has made itself available to provide any clarification to parliament, as this is a political clarification and not a legal one and that “anything beyond that is innuendo and political exploitation”.
At the end of the hearing, a request from the PSD requesting new documentation on the contracts involving Capitão Ferreira was unanimously approved, with IL adding to the request the resumes of the other people invited to submit proposals for that controversial advice.
Source: DN
