Portugal’s Public Prosecutor had ordered the immediate arrest of Duarte Lima so he can start serving a six year jail sentence. The same applied to Lima’s partner in crime, Vítor Raposo. Both were picked up today.
The former PSD MP, Duarte Lima, was instrumental in a land deal using over €40 million, borrowed from the former Banco Português de Negócios.
The loan was to buy land in Oeiras where a hospital was to be built. The former politician set up a scheme with the heirs of the land to buy it at below market price. The hospital was never built and BPN ended up losing €17.8 million.
Banco Português de Negócios, from which Lima and his associates managed to borrow €43 million for the Homeland property fund, had to be nationalised by the Portuguese Government in 2008 after a bad management and malpractice-related debt of €1.8 billion and several ‘irregularities’ finally were uncovered.
Lima and Victor Raposo withdrew €17.8 million from the bank led by Oliveira Costa, to use for their personal benefit and for the benefit of their accomplices.
This became the Homeland case but in addition, Lima is facing charged for the murder of heiress, Rosalina Ribeiro, in Brazil from whom he is alleged to have stolen €5 million. She was murdered on December 7, 2009, in Maricá, 80 kilometres from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The former parliamentary leader of the PSD was acting as Ribeiro’s lawyer in a case that involved the estate of Portuguese millionaire Lucio Feiteira who died in 2000.
Lima now is broke: "In the District of Lisbon, Lisbon - Central Instance - 1st Sec.Comércio - J3 of Lisbon, a judgment was issued declaring the insolvency of the debtor: Domingos Duarte Lima" reads a note published on the Citius website, dated 21st of December, 2016.
An Assistant Attorney General of the Supreme Court of Justice said Lima’s sentence now has become final - it can not be appealed - and requested that the case be returned to the lower court in order for the jail sentence to be enforced.
A prosecutor at the criminal court in Lisbon signed the arrest warrants for Duarte Lima and his partner, Vítor Raposo, on July 26th, 2018.
The arrest did not proceed immediately because the judge who received the warrants understood that there is still an appeal to be resolved, admitted to the Court of Appeal of Lisbon in May 2017, where Lima’s defence team refers to the possibility of going to the Constitutional Court.
Lima’s first sentence in the Homeland case was ten years, reduced to six years for deception and money laundering. On appeal, Judge Rui Rangel reduced the sentence to six years.
