The Supreme Court accepted the appeal of Ricardo Salgado and imposed a sentence of eight years in prison

The Supreme Court (STJ) accepted the defense request of former banker Ricardo Salgado to admit an appeal against his conviction in a separate Operation Marquez trial and will consider a sentence of eight years in prison.

According to the STJ order, Vice President Nuno Gonçalves accepted the legitimacy of the arguments of the lawyers of the former president of Grupo Espirito Santo (GES), who indicated that the May decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal increased the sentence of Ricardo Salgado from six to eight years in prison, thus not limiting himself to confirmation first instance decision dated March 2022.

“The appeal is partially granted and the order complained of must be replaced by another which allows for the first appeal that the respondent Ricardo Espirito Santo Silva Salgado filed against the decision of the appeal rendered on May 24, 2023, limiting it to the segment concerning the punishment uniquely,” the STJ decision said , issued this Saturday ECO and to which Lusa also had access.

Taking into account the “only partial” confirmation in the report of the decision of the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon in connection with the change in the single sentence (applied as a legal aggregate of three partial sentences of four years for three offenses of breach of trust), STJ understood that there was “a discrepancy between two solutions.”

In this sense, it decided that the appeal brought by the former banker’s lawyers Francisco Proença de Carvalho and Adriano Schilacce was admissible, but only in relation to the issue of the fine. If there had been full confirmation of the first instance decision, the appeal would no longer be viable as the law only provides for sentences exceeding eight years’ imprisonment to be considered in the STJ.

In the most recent appeal, in September, the defense moved to overturn TRL’s decision, seeking the denial of a medical examination, which was nevertheless carried out in the context of the EDP case, which is currently pending, and the non-suspension of a single prison sentence due to psychological abnormalities resulting from a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Prisoning a defendant with Alzheimer’s disease is equivalent to giving him a death sentence. (…) This only happened in this case because the name of the accused is Ricardo Salgado,” the lawyers said, further condemning “the appalling judicial approach that violates human dignity and health and, apparently, is not against applying the death penalty in disguise “

The former banker was charged with 21 crimes in the Operation Marquez case, but in an order issued on April 9, 2021, Judge Ivo Rosa dropped almost all the charges against the defendant.

Ricardo Salgado is on trial in a separate case for three offenses of breach of trust in connection with the transfer of more than €10 million.