Tiago Petinga / Lusa
Ana Rita Cavaco, President of the Order of Nurses, at the Parliamentary Health Committee
The Public Prosecutor’s Office let the deadline pass to appeal the acquittal of the nurses’ officers in the case of the alleged fictitious trips. The prosecutor will have believed that an additional period of 30 days to file an appeal in the case — which would be of special, not exceptional, complexity.
Failure to file an appeal against the decision to acquit the President of the Order of Nurses, Luís Filipe Barreiraand the old bastonary Ana Rita Cavacowill be investigated, by order of the Attorney General of the Republic.
The two officers, and 11 other defendants, were crimes of money and falsification of documents, within the scope of a criminal proceeding in which the undue payment of travel expenses that were never made.
Questioned by Lusa about the non-filing of an appeal, contrary to the intention that had been announced at the time of the ruling, the Attorney General’s Office said that the Public Prosecutor’s Office “considered the deadline set for cases with declaration of exceptional complexity”.
In other words, the prosecutor Julia Henriquesholder of the case, considered that he had a additional period of 30 days to file an appeal believing that the process had been given a classification of exceptional complexity, which did not happen.
The assignment of exceptional complexity to a process allows to increase procedural deadlines, including those of appealwithin 30 days, or even a longer period, if requested and authorized by the judge, something the prosecutor did not do.
However, “the process has a statement of special complexityand not exceptional complexity, established by the judge at the time of distribution, which has no effect on the period under consideration, which thus elapsed”, explained the PGR.
“Based on the powers of the Statute of the Public Ministry, the Attorney General of the Republic determined the investigation of the circumstancess that led to the non-filing of the aforementioned appeal”, the PGR told Lusa.
In the judgment of the case of alleged fictitious trips in the Order of Nurses, the former president Ana Rita Cavaco, the current president Luís Filipe Barreira, and 11 other defendants were accused of having diverted 63 thousand euros of the professional association for their own benefit. The president, in office since December 2023, was at the time vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Order of Nurses.
Prosecutor Júlia Henriques requested, in the closing arguments, the conviction of all defendants to a suspended sentence, but the court’s ruling of November 24, acquitted all the accused.
When reading the ruling, the president of the panel of judges, Armandina Silva Lopesjustified the acquittal with the fact that a “serious and reasonable doubt” that the defendants had committed the crimes of embezzlement and falsification of documents of which they were accused.
In the closing arguments of the trial, which began on January 20, 2025, the MP had a suspended prison sentence.
On November 24, the lawyers for most of the defendants, Tiago Costa Andrade and Rui Patrício, were satisfied with the acquittalwhile Luís Filipe Barreira assured that he never expected “another outcome” other than the recognition by justice that did not commit any offense.
