The mayor of Faro, Rogério Bacalhau, and councilwoman Sophie Matias expressed this Monday their “total serenity” and “confidence” in court, after being pronounced by an alleged urban crime.
“We fully trust that, during the trial, it will be shown that we always act transparently, within the legality and strict fulfillment of our duties,” reads a response sent to Lusa by the mayors.
At issue is the licensing of a work to build 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 () Vilamoura Vila Real de Santo António.
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.
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.
“All decisions made in the exercise of our duties have always been guided by compliance with the law and the public interest, based on technical opinions of the competent municipal services. In this case, licensing followed the usual procedures, having been granted based on favorable information and technical opinions, ”he says.
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 ”.
As part of the case inquiry, the prosecutor 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.
“It is important to clarify that there has never been any personal use or improper benefit, a fact that the prosecutor himself recognizes by not finding any evidence of corruption or prevarication,” they underline.
In the order of prosecution, dated October 2023, the Public Prosecution Service asks for the two mayors to be applied to the accessory penalty of prohibition of the exercise of civil service, claiming that its conduct “reveals manifest and serious disrespect of the duties inherent to the functions performed” .
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