The Foreign Minister on Tuesday felt he was fit to remain in office, saying he would have resigned if he had understood otherwise.
“If you didn’t think [que tenho condições] I would have already submitted my resignation and left,” said João Gomes Cravinho, who was in charge of defense from 2018 to 2022 before moving to the foreign ministry.
The minister addressed a hearing before the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and responded to the leader of the parliamentary party Liberal Initiative (IL) Rodrigo Saraiva, who asked him a question about this a few moments earlier and mentioned some of the controversies associated with it, namely: lowering the cost works in the Belen military hospital.
“There is no reason for me to do this, since everything related to my personal life or my previous work as Minister of National Defense, I can explain with full satisfaction to myself from the very beginning, and I am at your disposal here in the Assembly of the Republic to deepen questions that interest you,” he said.
Moments earlier, Liberal parliamentary leader Rodrigo Saraiva stressed the need for “governments with political power to do their job, especially those that represent all of us and represent the country from the outside.”
It is “still unclear to IL” why, for a certain period of time, the report of the Inspectorate General of National Defense (IGDN) on the re-qualification of the military hospital of Belém was classified and stated that it did not understand the appointment of former National Defense Resources CEO Alberto Coelho, accused in the operation ” The Perfect Storm for a state-owned defense company.
Operation Perfect Storm was launched in December by the Judicial Police (JP) in coordination with the Ministry of Public Affairs and resulted in the arrest of five people, including three senior Defense Ministry officials and two businessmen, for a total of 19 defendants, as far as the period is concerned. when Joao Gomes Cravinho was in charge of this ministry.
One of the five detainees is Alberto Coelho, former Director General of the National Defense Resources, who is alleged to have been involved in the skid during the refurbishment of the Belém military hospital.
At stake are costs of around 3.2 million euros for a contract to convert Lisbon’s former Belém military hospital into a covid-19 support center, a work that had an original budget of 750,000 euros.
The slippage was identified during an inspection by the National Defense Inspectorate (IGDN), which focused on the actions of Alberto Coelho.
After leaving the Directorate General of National Defense Resources, Alberto Coelho chaired the board of directors of ETI (EMPORDEF – Tecnologias de Informação, SA) from June 8, 2021 to July 31 this year, before submitting his resignation, according to the information released. company in Luso.
Called Operation Perfect Storm, according to the Judicial Police, it is a “criminal investigation aimed at investigating the possible practices of, among other things, crimes of active and passive corruption, embezzlement, economic involvement in business, abuse of power and money laundering, illegal activities related to payments by the central administrative authority to various companies that caused damage to the Portuguese state for many thousands of euros.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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