The former president of the Raríssimas association, Paula Brito da Costa, has been accused by the public ministry of breach of trust and forgery of documents, accusing her of misappropriating more than 100,000 euros from the institution.
According to a memo published on the official website of the Ministry of State (MP), an investigation by the Department of Investigations and Criminal Affairs (DIAP) of Lisbon concluded that “the value of the goods and services received and the amounts received as benefits / reimbursement of expenses are converted into illegal benefit of EUR 102,663.54 against IPSS [Instituição Particular de Solidariedade Social]”.
The memo states that former Raríssimas president Paula Brito da Costa was “at the time of the events” in charge of “the day-to-day management of the association’s assets and, according to the prosecution, used its financial resources as if they were its own and for the benefit of the staff”, which , according to the deputy, “turned into three different behaviors.”
The first is “using an IPSS credit card entrusted to your care for a wide variety of personal expenses”, the second is “claiming a refund from the IPSS upon presentation of invoices, often with your own taxpayer.” a number of expenses of a personal nature” justified as being made “in the service and in the interests” of Rarissimas, and the third “to determine the monthly payment to the administrative services of the IPSS for ineligible business trips.”
According to the deputy, these travel expenses were not paid “either because they, for the most part, were not carried out, or because they did not integrate the concept of official travel, or because they were not carried out on their own vehicle. but by an association and federation of which he was also president.”
“To account for such payments, “Travel Bulletins” were supplied monthly, which included facts that did not correspond to reality,” the note also explains.
Raríssimas is the National Association for Rare Mental Disorders, founded in April 2002 to support people with rare diseases. In December 2017, a TVI report exposed irregularities in the management of the association.
The scandal led to the resignation of the then health minister, Manuel Delgado, and the removal of the association’s then president, Paula Brito e Costa.
In 2019, an audit of the accounts of Raríssimas for 2017, revealed at the general meeting of the IPSS, at which the report and accounts for that year were presented, showed that Paula Brito i Costa owed the institution about 350 thousand euros.