Diogo Moura, CDS/PP councilor at Lisbon City Council
There is a “hole” in the law that allows electoral fraud in all votes that do not belong to sovereign bodies.
As electoral fraud carried out in internal elections of parties, associations and other organizations are not punished by law.
The law provides that electoral fraud crimes are limited to elections for sovereign bodies – such as, for example, for the Presidency of the Republic, Assembly of the Republic, European Parliament, bodies of Autonomous Regions or local authorities.
At this point, electoral fraud committed in internal elections for the leadership of political parties or football clubs is excluded, for example.
A recent case was the Diogo Moura, vice-president of the CDS.
The Public Ministry accused Diogo Moura of “two crimes of fraud in elections, aggravated”, for having allegedly sought manipulate the votes of activists in two electoral acts (2019 and 2021).
According to CNN Portugal, Diogo Moura “knew that a secretary from the Lisbon district was at the voting table and sent several messages at the same time asking him to introduce militant votes into the polls not present themselves at the voting table”.
However, “the district secretary never responded to requests” and the case ended up being reported and investigated by the PSP. The Public Ministry ended up accusing the councilor of two attempted crimes of electoral fraud, as the delegate did not follow instructions.
But the decision of the Central Criminal Instruction Court, at the beginning of this month, was not to put Diogo Moura on trial, for the crime of electoral fraud in the election of delegates to the CDS-PP National Council. According to the (CM), What got the CDS vice-president off the hook was this “hole in the law”.
The councilor of Lisbon City Council, suspended by Carlos Moedasin May, due to this controversy. At the beginning of the month, Diogo Moura celebrated having “not committed any crime”. However, according to the order, to which the CM had access, the magistrate did not even appreciate the evidence.
