Manuel De Almeida / Lusa
Ricardo Salgado, former president of BES, leaving the Central Criminal Investigation Court
“It would be a useless act to subject someone to a sentence who does not understand it,” explained the prosecutor. Former president of BES has Alzheimer’s.
Ricardo Salgado is accused of having corrupted Manuel Pinho. The former president of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) allegedly made illegal agreements with the then minister, so that he could benefit the Espírito Santo Group (GES) in urban planning processes, among others.
In the EDP case, Salgado was sentenced to six years and three months in prison. In Operation Marquis, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for breach of trust for having embezzled almost 11 million euros from GES.
The final decision of the panel of judges will be made soon: next week, June 2nd.
Now 81 years old, Ricardo Salgado was diagnosed with Alzheimer. In the most recent report, the Institute of Forensic Medicine wrote that Ricardo Salgado has “significant changes in terms of orientation, attention and memory”, psychomotor slowness and needs help with daily tasks such as hygiene, medication and personal care, cited by . Furthermore, he is visibly disoriented at times.
Therefore, the very Public prosecutor asks defendant not to stay in prison.
“It would be an act useless subject to a penalty someone who doesn’t understand her“, said prosecutor Rui Batista during the closing arguments at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, this Tuesday.
Prosecutor Rui Batista asked for a single sentence of between 10 and 11 years, but appealed to the suspension execution, advances to .
Due to his state of health, Ricardo Salgado would not be able to understand the punishment. And, therefore, Being imprisoned would even be a penalty contrary to the principles of criminal law.
Suspension of sentence is not synonymous with extinction of the sentence, added the prosecutor: the Court must “guarantee all the necessary mechanisms for the person to recover and then be able to serve the sentence”.
The defense agrees. THE decision of the court will be “easy”, claimed; because respect for human dignity is at stake.
Nuno Teixeira da Silva, ZAP //
