Latest news and stories about operation marques in Portugal for expats and residents.
Vítor Teixeira has scheduled a meeting for Friday, March 28. Sócrates will be represented by Pedro Delille, the lawyer who resigned from the main case.
The former prime minister made a post on Facebook to express his displeasure regarding the situation that occurred during this Tuesday's trial session.
Luís Rosa and Paulo Saragoça da Matta debate the return of the Operation Marquês trial and the PSD's proposal to end the carousel of resignations by José Sócrates' lawyers.
The trial session was interrupted.
The former prime minister sent a letter to the presiding judge of the panel hearing the Operation Marquês case to formally state that the decision for the lawyers to resign was entirely their own responsibility. “I learned of these decisions after they had been made, not before,” writes José Sócrates.
José Sócrates is once again without a lawyer after Marco António Amaro resigned from defending the former prime minister in Operation Marquês. Henrique Machado, Society editor at CNN Portugal, analyses the consequences of the decision.
João Massano had threatened José Preto with disciplinary proceedings over his criticisms of the court-appointed lawyer for the main defendant in Operation Marquês, José Sócrates.
The session is taking place at the Justice Campus in Lisbon.
Wiretaps reveal that António José Seguro was a target of José Sócrates. André Ventura was summoned to testify and admitted he had made a wrong decision while serving as a tax inspector.
Former prime minister José Sócrates has lodged a complaint with the United Nations regarding the Portuguese justice system in connection with Operation Marquês.
Lawyers for Helder Bataglia and José Paulo Pinto de Sousa (a cousin of José Sócrates) pressed Pedro Ferreira Neto during the second part of his testimony in the Operation Marquês trial.
Luís Rosa and lawyer Pedro Marinho Falcão discuss the resumption of the Operation Marquês trial, and Pedro Delille's withdrawal from Sócrates's defence, a pattern later repeated by José Preto.
After a 70-day pause, the presentation of evidence resumed on Tuesday morning in the Operation Marquês trial. Former prime minister José Sócrates is the main defendant in a case involving 21 accused and 117 charges of corruption, money laundering and tax fraud. The defendants face economic and financial crimes, notably corruption, money laundering and tax fraud, mainly linked to three dossiers: Grupo Lena, which includes the TGV high-speed rail project; the former telecommunications company Portugal Telecom (PT); and the Vale do Lobo 'resort' in the Algarve, to which Caixa Geral de Depósitos granted a loan now considered ruinous.
In the Operation Marquês case, the lawyer representing José Sócrates has been discharged from hospital, but it is unclear whether they will be able to attend the court hearing scheduled for 13 January.
The Lisbon Court of Appeal has ruled that the separate case linked to Operation Marquês, in which José Sócrates and Carlos Santos Silva are defendants, should not be joined to the main trial already underway and must be tried separately.
Judges criticised the defence of the former banker for using “manifestly anomalous means” to delay the decision from Operation Marquês becoming final and unappealable.
