The delay in the issuance of residence permits by the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), which ended on October 29, was also the subject of discussion between two of the key players in the criminal investigation that led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, António Costa. .
In a conversation recorded by the Public Prosecution Service (MP) on August 24, 2022 and transcribed in the order charging the nine defendants, Diogo Lacerda Machado – Costa’s well-known friend and witness at his wedding – is contacted by Afonso Salema, manager of Start Campus . , the company responsible for installing a “data center” in a protected area of Sines, which complained about the difficulties in obtaining residence visas for some of its senior foreign staff.
“We are here with the problem. The SEF is in chaos and this is affecting (…) we cannot give and pay for a contract, without a residence permit. (…) We have managed to get someone from the Ministry of Justice speak to the Foreign Office?” asks Salema.
Lacerda Machado, a consultant for Start Campus and the Member of Parliament, claims that he was hired because of his proximity to the head of the government to exert any influence that would benefit the company’s projects and accelerate the necessary licensing, is agree that “it is chaos”, correcting that the responsibility of the SEF lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Nevertheless, he proposes to Afonso Salema to try to speak with Luís Castro Henriques (Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Agency for Investments and Foreign Trade – AICEP), taking into account that, according to the statements attributed to him by the MP: “It is a shame that this State Secretary for Internationalization (then Eurico Brilhante Dias) is useless. He has no political capacity whatsoever.”
He concluded by saying that “I still talk to Escária from time to time”, referring to Vítor Escária, another of the detainees of last Tuesday’s operation, António Costa’s chief of staff, now acquitted, who was arrested by the PSP approximately seized 78,000 euros in banknotes. in his office, hidden in books and drinks cartons during searches carried out as part of the ‘Influencer’ investigation.
This episode is one of many that Central Investigation and Criminal Justice Department (DCIAP) prosecutors Hugo Neto, João Paulo Centeno and Ricardo Lamas use as an example of the extent of the network of influence Lacerda Machado used in the government. According to the Public Prosecution Service (PGR), this involves crimes, active and passive corruption of political office holders and the exercise of influence.
The planned Data Center was budgeted at EUR 500 million, which could increase to EUR 2 billion after all five phases were completed.
‘Political blackmail with the government’
This web was sometimes extended, supposedly successfully, to the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba, who became the MP’s accused and suspect of ‘interfering in virtually all matters subject to investigation, since the time he became Secretary of State for Energy was, the President of the Environmental Protection Agency, Nuno Lacasta (one of those arrested), and the President of the Chamber of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas; other times not so much, such as the aforementioned Eurico Brilhante Dias, two heads of the municipality of Sines, a councilor and architect, of whom the MP acknowledges that they “have conducted a behavior that complies with the standards applicable to their activities and that sometimes has proven to be incompatible with the interests of Start Campus”.
Brilhante Dias, the current parliamentary leader of the PS, was approached by João Galamba on September 21, 2021. According to the MP, this involved the declassification of a Special Protection Area (ZEC), which contains several species and protected habitats. to the installation of the planned mega data center, which left in annoyance, judging by the prosecutors’ description. “Oops. That’s the way it is. That needs to be fixed. That needs to be rectified,” Galamba lamented.
Brilhante Dias was not easy to convince. “I’m sorry, but what they are doing is political blackmail with the government. There is no basis. And the issue of the EIA (Environmental Impact Study) says (…) that is involved. If the Prime Minister (Prime Minister) spoke with Siza (Vieira), it is best to have all the information. (…) I’m sorry, but that can’t be the case. Let’s see. I will be the last person to want to violate a law of this nature. Any arrangement”.
Nevertheless, the creation of this plot was finally approved by the Sines Chamber, under the proposed conditions. Not without Lacerda Machadoter overcoming some obstacles. In the municipality of Sines, Start Campus managed to ‘recruit’ President Nuno Mascarenhas, in exchange, the MP claims, for a ‘sponsorship’ of 5,000 euros for the ‘Músicas do Mundo’ festival – whose budget is 1.3 million euros – and “an amount of no less than 100 euros” for a local children’s football team. But what may have been decisive for Mascarenhas’ concession was the ‘threat’ that the Socialist Party would withdraw the support and powers from the Chamber, conveyed to him by Lacerda Machado.
Councilor needs ‘a touch from above’
Another ‘obstacle’ was the Socialist councilor Filipa Faria, who, in a conversation with the MP, called the suspects of Start Campus, Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, someone who should ‘be careful not to be disliked’.
Salema laments that “Mascarenhas doesn’t do anything” and that “it can’t just be Mascarenhas”, and proposes “to work at Filipa this week, plan a lunch (…) to unlock the licenses”, because “this must be with lunches” – a significantly expensive procedure used by this interest network (see column opposite).
But the councilor proved to be ‘difficult’ and on June 30, Salema warned Lacerda Machado: ‘we have problems with the councilor, serious problems because she now says that some of our shell work is illegal, that it is all done. In the public domain you must have a building permit from us, and this while we have been talking to the House for months and only after we have almost completed the work does it remember this.”
Salema asks Lacerda to contact Vítor Escária so he can apply “some pressure” because “Mascarenhas has no control over her, he needs a touch from above”.
According to the MP, everything was finally resolved, after Afonso met Salema in S.Bento Vítor Escária, with the latter “again expressing his willingness to put pressure on the CMS”. Salema said: “it went very well, Vítor is very cool”.
PCP denies contacts with Lacerda
But there was someone else in the room who “raised issues”, an architect, Maria de Fátima Guiomar de Matos. “She is a very complicated person… wow, the boys are scared, they are obviously scared of her, she melts their heads and the boys… wow, I can’t understand it,” informs Miguel Gama, deputy chairman of AICEP, in a conversation recorded by the MP with Afonso Salema.
“If Escária tells Costa to forget his data center dreams because there is an architect in the Chamber who does not want to work, what do you think will happen? That is the story he hears, says Salema. the aforementioned order from the DCIAP asks which party it belongs to “to try to exert pressure through the leadership of that party” and while Miguel Gama mentioned that he would be from the PCP, Afonso Salema seemed relieved.
“We also have support from the PCP, the PCP likes us very much, adding that he would “maybe” ask Diogo (Lacerda Machado), because Diogo has already offered me several times to have a conversation with the Central Committee “.
The PCP, contacted by DN, confirmed that he had been contacted and met with Start Campus. “What we know about this matter stems from a formal request for a meeting by the company with the Parliamentary Group and the PCP, which was received at a strictly institutional level, as is customary,” the communist spokesman said.
As for Diogo Lacerda Machado and his possible contact, the PCP refutes: “with regard to the said person, there is no known participation in the PCP. Any other conclusions intended to be drawn are absolutely unfounded and rejected”.
Moreover, according to information that DN has managed to gather, the aforementioned architect is not from the PCP and will not have any connection with the party led by Paulo Raimundo.
It is recalled that as part of this operation, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Vítor Escária, the lawyer Lacerda Machado, the Mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas and the two directors of the company Start Campus, Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira, were arrested. Neves.
The MP also named Minister João Galamba and the chairman of the APA board of directors, Nuno Lacasta, and the former Secretary of State for Justice, lawyer João Tiago Silveira, as suspects.
Source: DN
