An investigation into Portugal’s ruinous Public Private Partnership (PPP) road building programme reveals that two former Public Works Ministers, Mário Lino and António Mendonça, and the former Secretary of State for Public Works, Paulo Campos have had their phone tapped since 2012.As a result, a criminal investigation is being finalised into suspicions of their criminal association, corruption, harmful management, influence peddling, tax fraud and money laundering.
The investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office into the 11 PPPs, related to the construction and concession of motorway operation in Portugal, now is in its final stages.
The three politicians from the José Sócrates government have been under surveillance, have been subject to a phone tapping regime and have had their homes searched.
The three soon will be made formal suspects, or ‘arguidos,’ after seven years of investigation which has focused on business dealings carried out between 2009 and 2011, namely the subcontracting contracts for the Douro Litoral, Trás-os-Montes, Baixo Alentejo, Litoral Oeste and the Algarve’s A22 Via do Infante motorways.
The renegotiations for the introduction of tolls on the formerly free ‘SCUT’ roads of Grande Lisboa (A16), the North (A7 and A11), the Grande Porto (A4), the Silver Coast, the Beira Litoral and the Beira Alta (A25) and the North Coast ( A28) also have been scrutinised as being 'harmful to the public interest.'
Among those who already have testified is the former Finance Minister, Teixeira dos Santos.
The investigation began in 2011 in Faro after prosecutor António Ventinhas, the current president of the Union of Magistrates of the Public Prosecutor's Office - but back then only a member of the union's leadership - opened a criminal investigation. This was after the publication of several news reports on the alleged ruinous PPP contracts launched by the Sócrates Government.
Later, several criminal complaints were filed, including one from the Automóvel Clube de Portugal.
These PPPs were the big thing for public investment during the two terms that Sócrates led the country between 2005 and 2011, but they also were the most controversial with €25 billion being borrowed as a way, "to improve the country's competitiveness and, in the short term, ensuring that more people have jobs."
The political opposition of the day and several economists, warned of the dangers of such a large investment in public debt, as well as doubting that the country could pay the resulting bill with its weak economic growth since 2001.
Even some key members of the Socialist Party stated, between 2005 and 2009, that Portugal's Gross Domestic Product would have to grow 3% per year to be able to pay the bill for the project.
The Court of Auditors refused to give approval to five subconcession contracts and strongly criticised the lack of transparency of the contract process, the political pressure from the Government on the Court of Auditors and the involvement of José Sócrates himself.
Portugal, already noted internationally for corruption in business and political life, now faces yet another high-level corruption case with, it is alleged, its politicians unable to help themselves when it comes to a fast-flowing gravy train with opportunities for self-enrichment at the expense of the nation they profess to love.
