José Coelho / Lusa
“Abuse, agency, violence.” For the former prime minister, “there can be no judgment” because “there is no accusation or pronunciation.”
The trial of Operation Marquis, who for the first time sits a former prime minister in the defendant bank, starts on the day July 3more than 10 years after the investigation is known.
The former ruler José Sócrates and 21 other defendants They will be tried by Judge Susana Seca from the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, on corruption crimes, laundering of capital and fraud.
The sessions will take place three days a week and will be interrupted during the summer judicial holidays, from July 16 to August 31, revealed the defenses of several defendants.
“There can be no judgment,” says Socrates
Socrates has again argued that his defense “is prevented from participating” in meetings such as the one that took place this Monday to schedule the date of the judgment of Operation Marquis, in which the majority of lawyers in the main proceedings participated and in which the former prime minister’s lawyer did not attend.
“The Marquis process has not yet exceeded the instructional phase. For that reason There can be no judgment. This is the position of the defense that, for these reasons, is prevented from participating in judicial meetings that intend to impose facts consummated in legal proceedings without compliance with due process of law, ”he alleged in a statement to the media who was head of government between 2005 and 2011.
In the statement, José Sócrates reiterated his understanding that successive judicial decisions after the prosecutor’s prosecution, dated 2017, imply that he currently does not exist “Neither accusation nor pronunciation” (accusation after instruction) so that the case can go to trial at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon.
“Everything that is forbidden by the Code the Judge Ladies have done,” reads the note, according to., After writing that the January 2024 Relationship Judgment that “invented a lapse of writing” in the accusation. It is recalled that, at that time, a decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal recovered the original accusation almost all the way and determined the trip to the trial of 22 defendants by 118 economic and financial crimesrevoking the instructional decision of Judge Ivo Rosa.
This lapse, says the former prime minister, was decided in the Lisbon relationship, but by two judges who belonged to the relations of Porto and Guimarães. It was a “trick”, denounces Socrates, to “keep the criminal action alive illegitimately manipulating the statute of limitations of the process.”
“This is the true face of the Marquis process – abuse, agency, violence”, Also accuses José Sócrates, 67, who for over a decade and preventively, remaining free since 2015.
In 2017, the former prime minister by the Public Prosecution Service of 31 crimesnamely passive corruption, capital bleaching, document falsification and tax fraud, but in the instructional decision, on April 9, 2021, the judge Ivo Rosa decided to librate the former ruler of 25 of the 31 crimespronouncing it for trial only for three capital bleaching crimes and three document falsification.
The defendants have generally denied the commission of crimes.
