Former Prime Minister José Sócrates, who served from March 2005 to June 2011, testified on the fifth day of the Operation Marquês trial. He responded to prosecutor Rómulo Mateus’s questions regarding his personal and professional situation between leaving the government and starting at Octapharma in February 2013, where he received an initial monthly salary of approximately 12,500 euros.
“When I left the government, the first thing I did was to take out a loan from Caixa Geral de Depósitos. I borrowed 150,000 euros to move to Paris [France] and spend a year without working,” he explained, noting that the move, accompanied by his eldest son, was to pursue a master’s degree in Political Theory.
The funds reportedly lasted “for a year,” until “at the end of the 2012 academic year,” his mother decided to sell her apartment in central Lisbon and move to another house she owned in Cascais.
According to José Sócrates, the property was sold for 600,000 euros to Carlos Santos Silva, a businessman reputed to be a frontman for the former leader.
Of this amount, 450,000 euros, he stated, were given to him by his mother because she had no income.
“Where did the money to live come from? From the sale of my mother’s house. Because my brother had just passed away, and she was angry with my brother’s family,” Sócrates explained emotionally, emphasizing that he would prove that in the 1980s, his mother inherited a fortune of “one million contos” (five million euros).
The 67-year-old former prime minister is charged with 22 crimes, including three counts of corruption, for allegedly receiving money through frontmen to benefit the Lena Group – for which Carlos Santos Silva worked -, the Espírito Santo Group (GES), and the Vale do Lobo development in the Algarve.
The case comprises a total of 21 defendants, charged collectively with 117 economic and financial crimes.
The trial began on July 3 at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon and continues on September 2, with further questioning of José Sócrates.
The defendants, in general, have denied any wrongdoing.
