Porto urban adviser says dispatch was ‘absolutely normal’

The urban adviser of the Chamber of Porto said on Monday that the order he gave in the urban process under investigation under Operation Babylon was “a perfectly normal act” and that “it would be strange” if he left the process “in a box table.”

“What happened was an absolutely normal act,” Pedro Bagaña, urban adviser to the Chamber of Porto, said in statements to reporters, referring to the shipment provided in the city’s trial, which is being investigated as part of Operation Babylon.

Pedro Bagaña, whose mobile phone was confiscated on Tuesday in searches by the Judicial Police (PJ) of the city’s processes handled by Porto’s municipality, said it was a “frequent” action and that in many city projects it is “to warn in a wide variety of ways” of “urgency” processing processes under its control.

“To date, I have sent over 15,000 cases, and many of them warn me in a variety of ways, even through direct contact with the department or with the administration of the municipality, that for some reason the cases that are in my charge. needs to be sent urgently, or due to loss of credit, or contractors, or cases that cannot be completed,” he said.

The Público newspaper reported on Sunday that the urban adviser was not prosecuted as part of one of the Babylon operation investigations, but “he is one of six professionals associated with the municipality who, according to the public ministry, have benefited from the results of three licensing processes, which were approved at the request of two real estate entrepreneurs.”

Claiming that it “would be strange” if he withheld the city’s processes or “put them in a drawer,” the adviser said he did not remember the promoters of the project in question contacting him.

“Naturally, I don’t remember any contacts. I don’t know if I was or wasn’t, but if I was, then naturally, because he is in this and in many others,” he said, adding that the information that substantiated his decision, was submitted on January 8, 2020, and the corresponding order followed digitally five days later.

Bagagna reiterated that he did not remember “being contacted in this particular process”, considering this fact “natural, because the city operation is banal, and what was offered was a city operation for a small storefront.”

Asked about two detainees linked to the Chamber of Porto on allegations of corruption in real estate projects that were released on Friday, Pedro Bagaña said “processing time” in the process was at stake.

“The process in question started in 2016. The said order was issued four years after the entry into force of the process, so it does not seem to me that this process was accelerated beyond that,” he said, noting, however, that the authorities should investigate “possible influences” if “there are legal and criminal affairs”.

“Understand, I cannot analyze the processing of all 15 thousand processes or actions that are offered to me. I have no control over what is given to me to dispatch, it is the services that determine the proposal for the solution. It remains only to evaluate what is offered. I usually do this assessment with my management team and in this case it happened,” he added.

Operation Babylon deals with alleged crimes of obtaining or offering undue advantages, active and passive corruption, evasion and abuse of power committed by an official or political holder.