The Head of State reiterated today that the Public Prosecutor’s Office considered the documents from the Presidency of the Republic on the case of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins who were given the drug Zolgensma in Portugal to be a secret.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office sent a letter saying that the documents would be included in the case, which is being kept secret. It’s in writing,” he said.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking to journalists as he left the Portuguese Oncology Institute (IPO) in Porto, after inaugurating the support space for people with advanced diseases located in the Palliative Care Service.
When asked about the news that the report by the General Inspectorate of Health Activities (IGAS) on the twins’ case states that the Presidency of the Republic did not initially send the documentation requested by this body, the head of state repeated, at the insistence of journalists, that the understanding of the Public Prosecutor’s Office “is written”.
On Friday, when confronted by journalists outside the Ajuda National Palace in Lisbon, after swearing in the 41 secretaries of state of the XXIV Constitutional Government, headed by Luís Montenegro, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had already clarified that “the Public Prosecutor’s Office considered it to be a secret of justice” and for this reason it was not sent to TVI or IGAS, who requested it.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office thought it was a legal secret,” he said at the time.
“The Presidency of the Republic saw fit to check whether or not there had been a breach of judicial secrecy. It was understood by the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA) that there was no violation of the secrecy of justice, that there were reasons that justified disclosure. [The documents] were released in January [both to TVI],” he added.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also reiterated that he never spoke to his son, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, about this case. “Because, precisely, if it’s under investigation, I thought I shouldn’t talk,” he explained.
At the time, when asked if his son had invoked his name to intercede in favor of the administration of the medicine to the Portuguese-Brazilian twins, he referred to Nuno Rebelo de Sousa himself to explain his behavior: “You’ll have to ask him, he’s 51 years old, he’s of age and vaccinated, he lives in another state.”
According to the newspaper Expresso, in its report on this case the IGAS considers that the Presidency of the Republic “conditioned the direction of the investigation” by initially refusing to send requested documentation, claiming that it was a secret of justice.
According to Expresso, this point “deserves a whole chapter” in the report, entitled “Constraints in carrying out the inspection”.
The IGAS states that on December 21 of last year it requested information from the President of the Republic’s Civil House “on the nature and dates of the contacts maintained” in relation to this case with the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Lisboa Norte (CHULN), to which the Hospital de Santa Maria belongs, asking for “the identification of the interlocutor(s) at CHULN with a remittance of any documentation exchanged in this context”.
“Six days later, Belém informed IGAS that all the documentation had been sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and was under judicial secrecy. It was only on January 23, 2024, after a request from TVI journalists to the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents, which gave a positive opinion on sending the documents, that IGAS received what it had requested,” reads the Expresso report.
On December 4 last year, speaking to journalists in an auditorium at the Palácio de Belém, the President of the Republic confirmed that his son, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, had contacted him by email in 2019 about the case of two Portuguese-Brazilian twins with spinal muscular atrophy, who came to receive one of the most expensive medicines in the world at the Hospital de Santa Maria.
On that occasion, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa reported on correspondence exchanged at the Presidency of the Republic in response to his son, sent to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and defended that he gave this case “the most neutral dispatch”, like so many others.
https://www.portugalpulse.com/mortagua-claims-that-the-credibility-of-the-sns-is-at-stake-in-the-case-of-the-twins-and-calls-for-sanctions/
https://www.portugalpulse.com/chega-files-request-for-parliamentary-inquiry-into-twins-case/
https://www.portugalpulse.com/lacerda-sales-criticizes-igas-for-giving-more-weight-to-the-word-of-the-personal-secretary-in-the-case-of-the-twins/
https://www.portugalpulse.com/general-inspection-concludes-that-access-to-the-luso-brazilian-twins-consultation-was-illegal/