Problems in notifying defendants push Ricardo Salgado’s trial to September – Portugal

The start of the trial in the BES/GES case will be postponed from June 18 to at least September, due to difficulties in notifying defendants, according to an order this Thursday from the court.

According to the order of judge Helena Susano, from the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, at issue is the confirmation that the Swiss defendant Michel Creton was notified only on April 26, which implies the restart of the 50-day period to count. the defenses of all defendants present their defenses, even those who had already been notified on January 17th.

However, the judge also assumed that it had not yet been possible to notify the Swiss defendant Etienne Cadosch, despite having already been located. In this sense, the future notification of this defendant will force the deadline to start again, dictating another postponement.

“If he is only available to be notified on the fiftieth day of the deadline (…) and with the interruption resulting from the judicial holidays, the period to contest will end at the end of September and the trial hearing will only be able to begin twenty days after the order that designates it (…) already considering this inevitable (on the part of the court) possibility of dragging the case until the end of October without being able to start the trial”, he admits.

And the judge in the case, also known as Universo Espírito Santo, added: “The law requires it (…). It is the will of the legislator materialized in it, to which the court must obey.”

The order also indicated that it keeps “September 10th and subsequent days” reserved for the trial sessions, freeing up the lawyers’ schedule in relation to this case until that date.

The trial of the Universo Espírito Santo criminal case will begin a decade after the collapse of the Espírito Santo Group (GES), in August 2014, and its main defendant is the former president of BES Ricardo Salgado, accused of 65 crimes, including which criminal association, active corruption, document forgery, qualified fraud and money laundering.

Considered one of the largest cases in the history of Portuguese justice, this case brings together 242 investigations into the main process, which were joined, and complaints from more than 300 people, natural and legal, residing in Portugal and abroad.

According to the Public Ministry, the collapse of the GES will have caused losses of more than 11.8 billion euros.