Scrap king Manuel Godinho – originally condemned to 17 years behind bars in the Face Oculta trial – has bypassed jail yet again, this time for laundering money with a view to dodging tax.
A four-year sentence has been suspended on the condition that he pays 3,000 euros to local firefighters.
The decision, says RTP today, comes because Godinho “did not have criminal antecedents at the date of the facts”.
How this statement is justified is not explained.
Godinho was sentenced in 2014 to 17 years in jail for his part in one of the most expensive and long-running cases in Portuguese judicial history (click here).
Today’s money-laundering trial decision refers to an incident that took place subsequently, the ‘diverting of 56,000 euros from a company of which Godinho was a director in 2017’.
In March this year, Observador remarked that even despite the dropping of some of his condemnations ‘due to judicial time-limits’, and the drastic reduction of his original sentence, the 65-year-old still has 35 crimes carrying jail time to contend with.
But for the time being, he remains free while others involved in Face Oculta – including former PS minister for Youth and Sport Armando Vara – are incarcerated in various national jails (click here).
