After almost eight years, Operation Lex comes to trial. Former judge Rui Rangel begins to be tried this Wednesday for corruption in the Supreme Court. Luís Filipe Vieira and businessman José Veiga will also go to trial.
Having been a judge, Rui Rangel now has to explain to the Supreme Court of Justice whether he was corrupted when he was a judge. He is accused of manipulating the distribution of cases with the support of the then president of the Lisbon Court of Appeal.
The judge’s power of influence will have attracted defendants such as businessman José Veiga.
The football businessman reportedly ordered, from Congo, a series of bank transfers for intervention in legal proceedings. The money allegedly left Africa and went to the accounts of the son of a lawyer close to Rui Rangel.
The Public Ministry says that between 2007 and 2018, Rangel will have received around one million euros.
The requests, allegedly made by the lawyer’s son, would be the support of a life of luxury incompatible with a magistrate’s salary.
The indictment speaks of three houses with rents always above 2,300 euros, one car worth more than 131 thousand eurosone dinner costing almost 19 thousand euros in Cascaisand even grocery shopping. One of them over nine thousand euros.
Rui Rangel will also have received tickets, seats and even the promise of a position at a university linked to Benfica. In return, he will have intervened in a tax process in Sintra linked to the son of Luís Filipe Vieira.
Rui Rangel is one of the 16 defendants in Operation Lex, the latest case by prosecutor Maria José Morgado. You are accused of 21 crimes corruption, tax fraud, money laundering, document forgery, usurpation of functions and abuse of power.
