The former chief of staff of the Minister of Infrastructure, Maria Antónia Araújo, will be heard on Wednesday at the TAP Commission of Inquiry about the controversial compensation of half a million euros to the former administrator of the airline Alexandra Reis.
Maria Antónia Araújo was the chief of staff of former minister Pedro Nuno Santos, who resigned following the €500,000 compensation to Alexandra Reis, and is currently head of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Frederico Francisco.
It is therefore expected that the TAP Commission of Inquiry will once again focus on the controversial fee, after several hearings in which the majority of the deputies focused on the April 26 events at the Ministry of Infrastructure, in which the former deputy of João Galamba, Frederico Pinheiro, was involved. , and led to the intervention of the Security Information Service (SIS) due to the removal of a service computer from the building.
After saying that he had not been informed of the 500,000 euro compensation and after his resignation, Pedro Nuno Santos clarified in a statement that he, the then Secretary of State Hugo Mendes and the Chief of Staff Maria Antónia Araújo “did not memory “that they were aware of the compensation and that the minister gave “political authorization to close the process”.
“The only new information, after my resignation, that I wanted to make public was that of a communication I found on 19 January 2023 from my then Chief of Staff (GC) and Secretary of State (SE), none of which I recalled , informed me of the final amount of the agreement reached by the parties and that it was not possible to further reduce the amount of compensation,” he said on January 20.
Maria Antónia Araújo’s hearing is scheduled for 6 pm before deputies discuss and vote on several requests for hearings submitted by various parliamentary groups following the events of April 26 and the involvement of SIS.
Among them are the request for a written statement from the National Director of the Public Security Police (PSP), Manuel Magina da Silva, for hearings by the Director of SIS, Adélio Neiva da Cruz, by the Secretary General of the Information System of the Portuguese Republic (SIRP), Graça Mira-Gomes, and the questioning of the Prime Minister, António Costa, which IL requested to be done in writing, but BE prefers to be done in person.
On Friday, the Assembly of the Republic approved the 60-day extension of the working period of the parliamentary investigative committee for TAP, which is due to be completed by May 23, to hold “all required and agreed hearings”, the final hearing being scheduled for June 16 , with the questioning of the Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina.
Source: DN
