The lawyer for MEP Alvaro Amaro, who was sentenced to a suspended prison term this Thursday, said he would appeal the decision of the Protective Court, saying it was “cruelly unfair”.
Speaking to reporters outside of court, Carlos Peixoto said the sentence of three and a half years in prison with a suspension of execution (subject to a payment of 25,000 euros to the state) “does not reflect” the truth.
“This is surprisingly negative for me, for the person I represent, because it seems to me that this is grossly unfair, that this represents a serious miscarriage of justice and that it does not have the slightest correspondence with the evidence that was made in court. “, he stressed.
As part of the public-private partnership (PPP) process carried out by the municipalities of Trancoso, Gouveia (Guarda) and Alcobaça (Leiria) between 2007 and 2011, the current MEP and former mayor of Gouveia and Guarda, Alvaro Amaro, and the current mayor of the municipality of Gouveia Luis Tadeu (then vice-president) were sentenced to three and a half months in prison for evading political office with a suspended sentence on condition that they pay 25,000 euros over one year.
For Carlos Peixoto, “such a proposal can have only one purpose, which is a resource” for the restoration of justice and truth.
“The punishment is severe and absolutely unlawful, because the only sentence that I accepted as possible after being in this process from the very beginning was acquittal,” he stressed.
According to the lawyer, the court, “besides ruling on criminal censorship of the conduct of Dr. Alvaro Amaro”, did “perhaps the only reasonable thing that the verdict depicts and decides, namely, the non-loss of parliamentary powers.” European mandate.
“But this does not mean that this sentence does not have very serious personal consequences for the person in question, and it does not mean that it will not have political consequences. And the court shouldn’t measure it, but it should have been measured,” he thought.
Carlos Peixoto was the only one who made statements to journalists after leaving the Tribunal da Guarda, which began to consider the case on May 10, 2022.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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