The mayor of Faro, Rogério Bacalhau, and Councilwoman Sophie Matias will be tried for the crime of violation of urban rules, indicates the order of pronunciation for the process, to which Lusa had access.
At issue is the licensing of a work for the construction of an AutoCaravan park in the parish of Montenegro, next to Faro Airport, in an agricultural land covered by the Planning Plan of the Coastal Orla (POOC) Vilamoura Vila Real de Santo António.
In the order of prosecution, dated October 2023, the Public Prosecution Service (MP) asks that the two mayors are applied to the accessory penalty of prohibition of the civil service exercise, claiming that their conduct “reveals manifest and serious disrespect for the duties inherent to those Exerted functions ”.
In addition to the mayors, the head of Urban Management Division and the Director of the Faro Chamber of Faro Infrastructure and Urbanism Department, at the time of the facts, a commercial society and its manager and the coordinator of the Architecture and Specialties Project of work.
After the deduction of prosecution, all defendants requested the opening of instruction, and the president of the alleged municipality, in this procedural phase, who “did not commit any crime” and only granted the issuance of the work license “based on favorable technical opinions ”.
Already the councilwoman with the Urbanism pelouro claimed to have granted the architectural project “due to technical information of the various interveners of the process”, also invoking that the compatibility between POOC and the Faro Municipal Master Plan (PDM) errors and inaccuracies ”.
According to the order of pronunciation, dated December 2024 and to which Lusa had access, for “considering that sufficient evidence was collected”, the Faro Court decided to pronounce all defendants to be submitted to trial.
The beginning of the case dates back to 2017, when Sociedade Yourset2go – Tourist Activities Unipessoal, Lda., Managed by Justino Ramos, asked the Faro Chamber to issue a license for the work, and the construction permit was issued in July 2019.
In September of this year, already with the work advanced and following complaints from residents, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) questioned the House about the existence of the project, about which “had total ignorance”, eventually issued in November opinion unfavorable to it.
According to the order of pronunciation, even after the unfavorable opinion of the APA, both Rogério Bacalhau and Sophie Matias “did not dilige in the sense of interrupting the construction until the question definitively clarified, which reveals that it reveals that […] They knew, because they had to know, that the wing [Área de Serviço para Autocaravanas] It was in an area whose building was prohibited. ”
In the statements they made, the mayors believe that they approved licensing and architectural projects without analyzing their legality, “limiting the mere declaration of ‘agreement’ with the grounds of previous opinion, information or proposal”, reads in the document .
“As we know, councilors and presidents of the Chamber have the power to elaborate and approve the plans for territory planning and to regulate their application, that is, the power to decide on urbanization, soil use and licensing of works Therefore it is not believable that they have done so, in the present case, with the lightness they wanted to show in instruction, ”he adds.
On the other hand, the MP underlines, the licensing of the work has since its beginning “an atypical processing”, since the issuance of the construction license would require the request for prior opinion to APA, as the land is classified as agricultural and It is within the boundaries of POOC, “which was not done.”
Thus, for the Public Prosecution Service, “it is too evident that“ all defendants knew that the property […] It is in an area whose building is prohibited and yet, they wanted to construct the Autocaravan Services area, aware of the non-compliance with applicable standards. ”
The MP also investigated whether the owner of the work, the former president of Faro Social Democrata Justino Ramos, would have benefited from the PSD majority authority, but no evidence of corruption or prevarication was found by political office holder.
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