The former mayor of Armamar, vice president of Vila Verde, councilor Oliveira de Azemeis, a businessman and his employee are accused of evading the regional DIAP of Porto. Deals with public-private partnerships are at stake, in which the businessman “brought” almost three million euros.
According to the indictment released by the Porto District Attorney, the businessman, with the help of his employee, took advantage of the expansion of public-private partnership legislation to local governments after 2006 to represent investments in public works. on a large scale, distorting the rules of public procurement, with the mayors of Oliveira de Azemeis, Vila Verde and Armamar. It capitalized on classified information vis-à-vis other potential competitors, set tender conditions in terms of selection criteria, set very short bid deadlines, and profited from artificially inflating the partnership object.
“As a result of this plan, joined by the mayoral defendants, the businessman defendant, with the help of the collaborationist defendant, presented relevant projects to formalize public-private partnerships in these municipalities, formalizing such partnerships in the municipalities of Vila Verde and Armamar,” the indictment says. . “On the part of the mayors, compliance with the requirements of these defendants allowed them, given the obstacles they had in making investments due to their lack of legal capacity, to present to the citizens the massive works promised in 2005. campaign, and with that advances in the 2009 elections, thus benefiting from an alternative solution to carry out these works, circumventing the financial and legal restrictions on the debt required by the investments required for such works, subject to the control of the General the directorate of local authorities and the Accounts Chamber,” he adds.
Via “automobile companies” with mixed capital, in which the defendant’s company was a partner, the works were then transferred to the company by means of a simple contract of work without any competitive procedure. Thus, the businessman invoiced these companies for 2.28 million euros to the municipality of Armamar (the amount has already been paid) and 695 thousand euros to the municipality of Vila Verde (the amount not yet paid, which the defendant company claims in the execution process at the TAF Port). ). These values will be carried by city councils by paying rent to car companies to operate and maintain the infrastructure.
The scheme simply did not come to fruition in Oliveira de Azeméis because, “although the procedure had gone to the stage of publishing a public-private partnership tender and submitting and evaluating bids, where the respondent businessman was the only one to submit a bid, the procedure did not move forward due to several discrepancies with this proposal, which the company did not clarify, prompting the jury of the procedure to decide not to award the award.”
The public prosecutor’s office demanded the loss to the state of the amounts paid or in the process of execution, with the abolition of all legal procedures and the conviction of the defendants in their payment.
At the moment, the deadline for opening the order is expiring.
Author: Manuel Jorge Bento
Source: CM Jornal
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