Portuguese former prime minister Socrates goes on trial in graft case
FILE PHOTO: Portugal's former Prime Minister Jose Socrates holds his protective mask as he leaves the court in Lisbon, Portugal, April 9, 2021. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes/File Photo
LISBON - Portuguese former Prime Minister Jose Socrates appeared before a court on Thursday on the first day of a long-delayed trial in which he faces charges of corruption that were reinstated after a judge had lifted them four years ago.
Socrates, 67, who denies wrongdoing, and his lawyer wanted the trial suspended and the presiding judge replaced, but the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon rejected their demands.
"Four years later, the state forces me to come to court again to respond to exactly the same charges," Socrates told reporters before entering the building, accusing the court of using the pretext of a clerical error to reinstate the charges and of manipulating the statute of limitations.
"The investigating judge, four years ago, considered that none of the charges were substantiated, not a single one. And he also considered them to be completely time-barred."
In 2021, Judge Ivo Rosa of Portugal's criminal court for preliminary hearings dismissed the corruption and tax fraud accusations against Socrates as weak, inconsistent or lacking sufficient evidence, and noted that the statute of limitations had run out on some of them.
Socrates was still facing lesser charges of money laundering worth some 1.7 million euros and falsifying documents.
A Socialist who served as prime minister in 2005-2011, Socrates was arrested at Lisbon's airport in November 2014 as part of Portugal's biggest-ever corruption investigation, codenamed Operation Marquis.
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It was the first time an ex-premier had been arrested in the country. He spent months in jail before being placed under house arrest.
In a country notorious for its slow justice system, it took prosecutors three years following the arrest to formally charge Socrates with 31 offences allegedly committed in the 2006-2015 period.
The statute of limitations on some of the offences has expired and in the new trial, Socrates is being tried for 22 offences, including passive corruption while in office, money laundering worth 34 million euros through the bank accounts of others abroad, and tax fraud. The alleged scheme involved the disgraced former heads of Banco Espirito Santo and Portugal Telecom, who have also denied wrongdoing.
Socrates stepped down as prime minister in March 2011, halfway through his second term, after a debt crisis forced him to request an international bailout, leading to years of painful austerity. REUTERS
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