It’s more than demanded by the troika claims Diário de Notícias in a story suggesting justice minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz has swooped to the rescue of Portugal’s many thousands of debtors.
In 2014 alone she is described as stripping as many as 86,000 cases from judicial calendars.
Since 2011, the number of cases dropped by prosecutors tops 300,000, writes DN.
It is a form of “cleansing” designed to reduce the horrendous backlog of cases plugging the works of a system known to function, at best, at the pace of a snail.
The debts referred to cases against individuals as well as companies, DN reveals. Indeed, since the legal changes that allowed for this cleansing, the State has “managed to tidy up cases dating back to before September 15, 2003” many of which now involve debts that could no longer be recovered.
As the paper explains, “there are no longer goods that could be seized from the debtor, nor even a salary or bank account”.
