He has been high-profile again over the weekend, assuring pensioners that 2015 will be a “better year”, but today CDS leader Paulo Portas is back in the hot seat in front of the ongoing submarine inquiry – allegedly to answer more inconvenient questions.
The panel will be grilling him particularly over a mystery meeting he is alleged to have had with a German businessman already convicted for bribing foreign officials.
The inquiry wants to know why the former Minister for Defence has never mentioned the meeting before.
Taking place before the PSD/CDS-PP government sanctioned the controversial billion euro purchase of two submarines from GSC (the German Submarine Consortium), Portas is believed to have met consortium heavyweight Hans-Dieter Mühlenbeck at Guincho Fortress, just outside Cascais in 2003.
That was the year before the submarine purchase deal was sanctioned by the government led at the time by outgoing European Commission president Durão Barroso.
Mühlenbeck was then a manager at Ferrostaal – the company whose name has now become synonymous with the whole submarine scandal.
He has since been found guilty, along with another colleague, of bribing foreign officials for Ferrostaal’s economic gain.
When Mühlenbeck gave evidence before the parliamentary inquiry recently, he described his meeting with Portas at Guincho fortress.
He said he had been called for one reason alone, writes Público today. “The presentation of bank guarantees by the German company.”
It had nothing to do with the discussion of any contra-deals, stressed Mühlenbeck – but Público maintains MPs are intrigued. They are particularly interested to find out why Portas has never alluded to it.
The inquiry will be sitting throughout the day.
Its stated agenda remains: “to assure the transparency of responsibility, by action or omission of all those concerned in the celebration of defence contracts – namely their degree of knowledge and involvement in the pre-contractual negotiations that preceded them”.
The inquiry has been sitting since a judge threw out all charges against GSC businessmen and others in February this year – despite a welter of apparently incriminating evidence.
The public ministry has since lodged an appeal.
