State ordered to compensate José Sócrates with 15 thousand euros

The court found the violation of judicial secrecy to be proven, but did not agree with Sócrates’ two other complaints regarding the long duration of the investigation and the PGR’s communications.

The Lisbon Circle Administrative Court ordered the Portuguese State to compensate former Prime Minister José Sócrates (2005-2011) in 15 thousand euros for poor administration of justice in the Operation Marquês case.

According to the ruling dated Saturday, to which Lusa had access today, the amount aims to compensate the former head of Government for the damages suffered as a result of “disclosure of information subject to judicial secrecy” by State bodies during the investigation.

In the action, José Sócrates claimed to have been harmed by the disclosure of information subject to judicial secrecy, the excessive length of the investigation and the content of the communications issued by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) during the investigation. The court only ruled in favor of the former prime minister with regard to breach of court secrecyadvance to .

In the sentence, the collective concludes that the secrecy of justice “was not observed”, considering that information about the detention of José Sócrates at Lisbon Airport, in November 2014, was disclosed by “someone among the procedural participants in the investigation”. The court also understands that the breach of confidentiality also occurred in other investigations carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in conjunction with the criminal investigating judge and the criminal police bodies, causing non-material damage to the former prime minister.

Regarding the alleged delay in the investigation, the court rejected Sócrates’ claim, concluding that no unlawful action by the State was demonstrated. The decision highlights the high complexity of Operation Marquês, which involved international judicial cooperation, technical expertise and the analysis of a large volume of documents, justifying the duration of the investigation phase.

The accusation relating to the communications released by the PGR was also not accepted. The court considered that these communications had a merely informative nature and fell within the legal possibility of provide institutional clarifications to societyeven when the process was subject to judicial secrecy. According to the sentence, the statements were limited to summarizing the facts investigated, the crimes in question, the identification of the defendants and the steps taken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, not constituting a violation of the presumption of innocence.

José Sócrates, who brought the action in 2017, demanded compensation of 205 thousand euros. Despite having obtained a partial victory, the former prime minister will bear the majority of the legal costs due to the principle of decay proportion, having to pay 92.7% of the process costs.