In an announcement posted today on its website, the District Attorney’s Office of Porto (PGDP) states that a panel of judges sentenced five other defendants, three to suspended sentences ranging from two to three and a half years, and two to fines of 2,160 euros and 1,800 euros, for various crimes including abuse of power, active and passive corruption, and document forgery.
“The Court considered the key facts attributed to six of the defendants as proven, thereby confirming that the defendant, an employee of the Urban Planning Division of the Municipal Urban Planning Directorate, created a project office operated in collaboration with a defendant technical agent of architecture and engineering,” the PGDP notes, citing the decision.
The ruling asserts that, at least from 2011 to 2015, the employee maintained the office, “providing, in exchange for payment, project design services and bureaucratic processing at the city council for several clients.”
The court found that this defendant “took advantage of his role and the privileged contacts he maintained within various urban planning departments of Braga City Council,” with the ultimate goal of obtaining personal benefits.
“Whether to expedite the processing of the file and, if possible, obtain its approval, to receive clients referred by the municipality services, or to imply to clients the ability to secure preferential treatment for cases from the services,” the panel of judges emphasized.
In a response sent to the Lusa news agency, Braga City Hall, led by Ricardo Rio (PSD), explained that in 2015, “following the public disclosure of facts potentially constituting disciplinary offenses, an inquiry process was initiated into the worker in question, later converted into a disciplinary process.”
In this context, the municipality added, “preventive measures were determined, including the preventive suspension of the worker, and a close cooperation was established with the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) to ensure the collection and production of necessary evidence.”
In 2022, after the MP’s indictment notification, “additional disciplinary processes were initiated against other targeted employees,” the municipality stated, adding that “these procedures are ongoing.”
“It should also be noted that the ruling issued in July 2025 has not become final. The employee in question was preventively suspended by the Municipality as part of the disciplinary process but was later reinstated in his duties by judicial decision, a situation that remains until the final conclusion of the process,” Braga City Hall indicated.
The Braga court also found that the former municipal employee “even brokered, in November 2014, the agreement between the defendant municipal police and one of the defendant businessmen, whereby the former, in exchange for 200 euros, did not issue the citation required due to nonconformities detected at the latter’s establishment, in the locality of Celeirós, Braga.”
The panel of judges declared forfeited to the State amounts ranging from 500 euros to 41,200 euros, with defendants ordered to pay these amounts according to their responsibility.
The court also partially upheld the incident of liquidation of incongruent assets filed against the former municipal employee and main defendant, and consequently declared more than 471,000 euros as forfeited to the State.
