Almost a year and a half after former EDP administrators António Mexia and João Manso Neto were accused of corrupting former minister Manuel Pinho, the defenses claim that there is more evidence than that provided by the Public Ministry.
To Lusa, the Attorney General’s Office said that “the Public Prosecutor’s Office has already made available to the defendants all the evidence that it considered should be made available”, but the defenses were not convinced and moved forward with requests, “claiming that there was more evidence that was not made available”.
The requests are currently being assessed and, until the issue of access to evidence is resolved, the opening of the investigation phase cannot be requested. – optional phase that precedes the trial and serves to decide whether or not there is sufficient evidence to judge -, since the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested that the period for opening investigations begin only when the evidence is available.
The indictment of this case, in which the Public Prosecutor’s Office believes that there was a pact that caused billions of euros in losses to the State and electricity consumers, was filed on October 28, 2024 and, since that time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been “eliminating emails that were declared unusable as evidence and verifying what evidence could be delivered to each of the defendants”, said the PGR, in a response sent to Lusa in November last year, when this verification work had not yet been completed. completed.
The Public Ministry accused António Mexia of having made a corrupt pact with former minister Manuel Pinho.
According to the indictment, the alleged illegitimate benefits, in exchange for António Mexia’s support “for Manuel Pinho’s professional and academic career” after he left his position as Minister of Economy (2005-2009), would have occurred “namely in the transition from the CAE (Economic Activity Codes) to the CMEC (Costs for the Maintenance of Contractual Equilibrium) and in the delivery of the Alqueva and Pedrógão dams to EDP without competition”.
Also former administrator João Manso Neto would have been informed of the pact and accepted it.
Although not “criminally responsible”, EDP would have had an undue benefit of more than 840 million euros as a result of the behavior of the accused, with the Public Prosecutor’s Office intending that the electricity company be obliged to return to the State “the value of the advantages” obtained.
In total, the EDP/CMEC case has six defendants, with António Mexia and João Manso Neto responsible for active corruption and Manuel Pinho and the other three accused for passive corruption.
The investigation was opened in 2012 and led, in December 2022, to another accusation that ended in the sentencing of Manuel Pinho and former banker Ricardo Salgado to prison, in a case also for corruption, unrelated to EDP, in which appeals are pending.
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