Portugal woke up this morning to news of yet another high-level corruption scandal – this time involving the government’s much-lauded Golden Visa programme.
According to news coming out of Lisbon, 150 police officers mounted a huge search operation early today in various points around the country.
First arrests were of the national director of SEF (the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras) Manuel Jarmela Palos, along with president of the notary institute António Figueiredo.
As PJ detectives targeted the offices of the Ministries of Justice and Internal Administration, further arrests were understood to be in the pipeline, with national tabloid Correio da Manhã reporting that the secretary-general of the Justice Ministry – Maria António Anes, wife of António Figueiredo – had also been detained, and that the Minister for Internal administration Miguel Macedo was equally under the spotlight.
Leading the breaking news online, CMTV reported that more “high ranking members” of the state were thought to be under suspicion.
The scandal centres on facilitating Golden Visas for applicants, overwhelmingly from China, who would not otherwise have qualified for them.
CM’s deputy director Eduardo Dâmaso explained that the scam is very likely to have involved not only people in top government jobs, but their families as well.
Talking on CMTV, he outlined a scenario whereby a “platform” was set up in Macau, specifically designed to guarantee applications on the payment of backhanders, to the tune of at least 10%.
As he explained, from the outset the programme alerted suspicious as it involved a “brutal concentration” on property investment – to the point that house prices were grossly inflated, both in Lisbon and the Algarve.
What alerted authorities was the lack of investment in job creation, which was one of the cornerstones of the programme – and the fact that countries elsewhere in Europe have dropped similar incentive programmes, specifically because they lent themselves to corruption and money-laundering.
The idea given by the government, which has presented the Golden Visa programme as a “success of economic diplomacy”, was that investors would stimulate the economy – either by creating jobs or buying property.
But only one firm so far as invested in jobs, he said, and even that has created only seven – “out of millions of euros that have poured in”.
“I don’t know where this investigation is going,” Dâmaso added. “But I have the feeling that it will go a great deal further and involve people with very high-level responsibilities.”
As the story rapidly set the country alight, it could not come at a worse time for the government which has been fending off criticisms from all sides, not least the troika, for longer that it can care to remember.
