This Friday, Rui Rio accused the prosecutor’s office of “political interference” by launching searches of his residence and the SDP’s national headquarters this Wednesday, and insisted on the urgent need for justice reform.
“If the president of the Republic, the Assembly and the parties don’t have the courage to say ‘enough’, the day will come when someone will say ‘enough’,” the former SDP president told SIC two days later. after searches on suspicion of embezzlement and abuse of power.
We are talking about the use of parliamentary funds intended for the payment of parliamentary advisers to pay party officials in the period from 2018 to 2022.
Rui Rio insisted that it was “a practice that has always extended to all parties” when the parties managed the funds, and that the anonymous internal complaint was made “out of revenge”.
As to the reason for the investigation, he accused the public ministry of not knowing what he was looking for: “The criteria of government that the deputy does not know what it is … when he puts 100 tax-paid agents (… ) look for nothing (…) that I did not understand what they were looking for in my house,” he said.
As for the management of party funds, which “was already like this in the 1980s” and which is a practice that affects all parties, Rui Rio said he did not understand why the SDP and its leadership were the only targets of searches.
The former SDP leader insisted that despite the fact that the Law distinguishes between two amounts for party funding, “these amounts are for the use of the party”, regardless of whether he works in a parliamentary group or in the headquarters, or in both places, because he works for the party.
“There is no one parliamentary faction, but another party. It’s all the same,” he defended, believing that the public ministry had an “absurd concept” of interpreting the law.
Following the searches, the SDP General Secretary wrote Thursday to the Attorney General of the Republic, believing that his party was the target of a “great discrepancy” lawsuit between the actions taken and the object of the investigation, in a nod to the 100 inspectors and experts who spent about 19 hours at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon.
Lucilia Gago told the SIC this Friday that she will review the content of the complaint and acknowledge that she will take appropriate action if necessary.
“It will be subject to monitoring and analysis, as, in fact, all news reaches me on a daily basis, which will be reviewed, analyzed and, if necessary, subjected to appropriate management measures if they deserve this assessment,” PGR said in a statement.