Nuno Veiga / Lusa
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
Nuno Rebelo de Sousa resigned as president of the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce of São Paulo, in Brazil, after the break in relations announced by his father, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, due to the twins’ case. But Nuno’s fall from grace began earlier.
After five years at the head of the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce of São Paulo, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa resigned from his position on April 18th, as announced by CNN Portugal. claimed “professional reasons” for this departure, but the severing of relations with his father also contributed to this outcome.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa classified his son’s actions as “unforgivable” in the case of the Brazilian twins who received the drug Zolgensma, at a total cost of around four million eurosin the National Health Service (SNS).
In a conversation with Brazilian journalists, the President of the Republic announced the severing of relations with his son, justifying that the their relationship “hadn’t been good for months”.
This announcement by Marcelo ended up “cut off the legs” of the son in Brazilwhere Nuno Rebelo de Sousa made use of his family status, as the son of the President of Portugal, in his activities as leader of the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce of São Paulo.
In 2023, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa intermediated the talks between the Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Lisbon and the Bank of Brasília to create a partnership with a view to game exploration in Brasilia. The partnership ended up being rejected by the Brasília Court of Auditors and the Central Bank.
The Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Ana Mendes Godinho, admitted that Nuno Rebelo de Sousa contacted her twiceto approach the business.
This intervention by Nuno Rebelo de Sousa in the business may be investigated by the new management of Santa Casa, which accumulated losses of 50 million euros in Brazil, as part of its attempt to internationalize.
In the case of the Brazilian twins, Marcelo’s son also tried to use the father’s influence so that girls had access to a very expensive medicine on the NHS. But Marcelo distanced himself from the case, placing all the blame on the son.
The General Inspection of Health Activities concluded that “legality requirements were not met in the access of the two children to the neuropediatric consultation” that allowed the use of the drug.
The case of the twins thus ended up being the drop of water in a relationship that was already tense between father and son. And Nuno Rebelo de Sousa ends up losing “the wing” of his father who made a point of publicly marking his separation from his son.
