The restriction of external judicial secrecy, which limits access to non-defendants in the case, prevents journalists from consulting the information. This has prompted the Public Prosecutor’s Office to announce a “criminal complaint regarding the content reported today” following details published by the magazine Sábado, which include summaries of wiretap transcriptions involving former Prime Minister António Costa.
In an official statement released today by the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) on its official page, it was confirmed that “the process where wiretaps were conducted is subject to external judicial secrecy, although not internally. As a result of a judicial decision, defendants have had repeated access since July 2024.”
DCIAP further mentioned that for “some” individuals, a “complete digital copy of the process (including bi-weekly wiretap reports, but not the recordings themselves)” was requested and obtained.
“No journalist has ever had access to the files at DCIAP,” assured the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is filing a complaint regarding Sábado’s report based on the Criminal Procedure Code. The code dictates that “publication, by any means, of intercepted conversations or communications within a process is not permitted, under penalty of simple disobedience, unless they are not subject to judicial secrecy and the participants expressly consent to the publication.”
The defense team of António Costa has once again requested today that the Public Prosecutor’s Office clarify the wiretaps involving the former Prime Minister and address the information leak from a process under judicial secrecy.
Reacting to the wiretaps disclosed today by the Sábado magazine, related to Operation Influencer and involving conversations between António Costa and his executive members, the defense of the former Prime Minister questioned: “Why continues to be released, intermittently, the content of certain criminal processes still under investigation, to which those with legitimate interest do not have access?”
In a statement sent to Lusa, lawyers João Lima Cluny and Diogo Serrano stated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office “has an obligation to clarify what it effectively did and publicly demonstrate that it never failed to comply with the demands of the law.”
While António Costa was not wiretapped directly, several suspects and defendants in Operation Influencer were under surveillance; thus, conversations involving the former Prime Minister had to be validated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
In today’s statement, the Public Prosecutor’s Office reiterated that António Costa was never directly wiretapped. It explained that summaries of wiretaps “with the accidental involvement” of the former Prime Minister were made “whenever they had evidential relevance to this process or when such summaries were necessary to allow the President of the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) to more easily understand the content of the communications and decide on their destruction.”
The then president of the STJ, Joaquim Piçarra, warned the Public Prosecutor’s Office that “interactions conducted within the criminal investigation are only a means of proving facts constituting criminal offenses and not a means of scrutinizing governmental activity.”
On November 7, 2023, five individuals were detained and subsequently released as part of Operation Influencer, including Costa’s then chief of staff, Vítor Escária.
There are suspicions of criminal activity in the construction of a data center in Sines, Setúbal district; in lithium exploration in Montalegre and Boticas, both in Vila Real district; and in the production of hydrogen energy, also in Sines.
The case led to the collapse of the government, which held an absolute majority, of the now President of the European Council.
