José Sócrates' rather fine Lisbon apartment, valued at around €300,000, has been seized by Finanças over an unpaid tax bill.
The former PM, still in jail in Évora pending charges of money laundering, tax fraud and corruption, managed in January to secure a €250,000 mortgage on the property, courtesy of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, but the apartment soon will be auctioned off if the debt around €5,800 is not settled.
The 165m2 property in Lisbon’s up market Rua Braamcamp has a valor patrimonial of €271,740 according to the registry where the charge over the property was registered by the state on May 28th.
The property soon will be added to the tax authority’s electronic register of seized properties for sale unless someone pays the debt and cancels the charge.
José Sócrates lawyer, João Araújo, has not felt inclined to answer questions on this matter.
Sócrates purchased the apartment in 1998 when he was Secretary of State for the Environment in the António Guterres government.
The former prime minister has been in custody since November last year with mystery remaining as to the criteria used by Caixa Geral to grant him a mortgage while he was incarcerated as part of a serious criminal investigation into his fiscal probity.
