A total of 86 Air Force personnel and food suppliers are to be charged with corruption as Operation Zeus draws to a close.
In a statement released this morning, the District Attorney's Office in Lisbon states that "at least since 2011, officers of the Directorate of Supply and Transport decided, in a concerted manner, to take advantage of their own military hierarchical structure to obtain undue revenues."
The Public Prosecutor's Office has called for corruption charges to be directed to 86 suspects involved with the purchasing and supply of food at Air Forces messes. The charges are criminal association, aggravated active and passive corruption, computer fraud and the falsification of documents.
The 86 defendants of Operation Zeus, 40 of whom are in the Armed Forces and 46 are businessmen and their employees, are charged for being involved in a scheme to overprice supplies of food to Air Force and Armed Forces Hospital messes. The overcharged amounts later were divided and paid out to those involved.
Those working in the messes obtained money, in violation of their legal duties, from overbilling and later took cash and covered their trails by altering records.
"The indictment represented an over-billing of an undetermined amount, but significantly higher than €2.5 million,” reads the indictment.
The Public Prosecutor's Office wants the forces personnel sacked as unfit to exercise public functions, and calls for financial penalties to be imposed on the companies . at the very least they should pay back the money that has been fiddled from the State.
Eleven of the defendants sit in jail awaiting trial, seven are under house arrest, four are banned from military sites and the rest have to clock in at their local police station on a regular basis.
