The Parliamentary Committee on National Defense will hear Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho and Defense Minister Marco Capitau Ferreira on the Operation Storm investigations on 8 February.
A parliamentary source told Lusa that hearings on the application filed by the PSD were scheduled for 10:00 am on 8 February.
This afternoon in the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Portuguese Communities, Minister Gomes Cravinho has already presented some data on this issue, but this hearing has already been scheduled, having been approved, with abstained PS, on January 18 in the Defense Committee.
In a statement, the Social Democrats are compiling a list of 30 questions that they believe João Gomes Cravinho, who led the defense between 2018 and 2022, did not answer in the urgent debate requested by Chega on the issue, which took place in plenary . December 20 last year.
The PSD also requires in this text that “the reassessment requested by the then Secretary of National Defense be submitted for review by the Inspector General of National Defense (IGDN) for compliance with the legislation’s administrative and financial procedures. direct CAMB settings [Centro de Apoio Militar de Belém covid-19]”.
At the end of last year, the PSD applied to hear Gomes Cravinho and current Minister of Defense Marco Capitan Ferreira, but at the time it ended in failure, as PS cited that Chega had already scheduled an urgent debate in the presence of the Minister.
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.
Secretary of State for Defense Marco Capitao Ferreira was President of idD Portugal Defense, a holding company that manages public interest in defense sector companies, before taking up government duties.
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.