When he was arrested in Rome last year, the news reverberated over international media. Portuguese ‘secret agent’ Frederico Carvalhão Gil was described as a man caught red-handed selling NATO secrets to the Russians
The BBC World Service heard from US security analyst Robert Schindler who said the matter was “deadly serious” (click here).
Gil was briefly incarcerated in Lisbon’s high-security Monsanto prison and has been under house arrest in Lisbon ever since.
His ‘Russian contact’ however was freed despite Portugal’s desire for Italian judges to extradite him here to face charges. The Italians found no case to answer.
Needless to say Gil was officially charged in June (click here) and now further “revelations” have appeared ‘exclusively’ in Sábado (part of the Cofina group that owns people’s tabloid Correio da Manhã).
Says the report, among the “vast collection of confidential data” confiscated from Gil’s possession were two handwritten pages with information about five Portuguese, among them former government minister in charge of Portugal’s secret services, Dias Loureiro.
The pages included personal and professional information, as well as information on current Secret Service boss Gil Vicente Ginja, university professor Sónia Moreira Reis (formally attached to the Secret Service), businessman Duarte D’Orey Manoel, and former minister for internal administration Daniel Sanches (in charge of the Secret Service between 1994-97).
Sábado claims Gil had been selling this kind of information to the Russians for 10 years.
His lawyer José Preto insists the whole story is an aberration, and the worst his client is guilty of is brokering a deal for olive oil (click here).
Whatever the truth, yet another apparently tortuous case is being aired through the press before it gets to court in a country where ‘strict’ Secrecy of Justice rulings appear to be on expedient elastic.
Photo: an old shot of Francisco Carvalhão Gil in Russia
