The bid for a Writ of Habeus Corpus, freeing former economy minister Manuel Pinho from over a year under house arrest, has failed. Portugal’s Supreme Court has rejected it, even though Mr Pinho’s lawyer insists that ‘by law’ his client’s continued detention on an electronic bracelet is illegal. Talking about this long-running case in which Mr Pinho is cited for passive corruption, television pundit Luís Marques Mendes said on Sunday that the former minister “has to explain about the money he received from Group Espírito Santo when he was a member of government. Behaviour like this is not normal. It is not normal for a serving minister to be receiving money from a private group. This generates suspicions of promiscuity” which is almost certainly why judges decided in the way that they did.
