Relations rejected the appeal of the heirs of the former BES administrator for access to seized assets

The Lisbon Court of Appeal (TRL) rejected the appeal of the heirs of former BES administrator José Manuel Espirito Santo, who died in February 2023, for the disgorgement of assets confiscated in the Universo Espirito Santo process.

According to the TRL decision, which Lusa had access to on Thursday, the panel of female judges concluded that they had “dismissed the appeal, upholding the decision” of the court in November 2023, which rejected the application to cancel the preventive arrest, and then dismissed it. access to assets, including two properties (in Cascais and Évora), movable property, three cars and an old-age pension.

“The death of an agent cannot be an obstacle to [prossecução da] process process [penal]”, judges Carla Carecho, Cristina Santana and Amelia Teixeira said in the ruling, ensuring that the risk of dissipation of assets belonging to José Manuel Espiritu Santo increased with his death.

“Previously, they became more acute, taking into account the greater and faster possibility of wasting the inheritance of this person until that time, which now formed part of the inheritance, at the time of its division among all the heirs, justifying this time the continuation of the measure taken,” they added.

According to the judges, both preventive arrest and arrest have “the same basis and are aimed at achieving the same goal, for example, ‘crime does not pay’.”

The judges also argued that preventive seizure was intended to protect existing assets to avoid changes that could harm the rights of injured parties (and even the state).

The appeal of the heirs of the former administrator of BES was distributed in April in TRL and challenged the retroactive application of the law adopted in 2017 – on the exception from termination of the process in the event of the death of the object, when a possible loss in favor of the state – taking into account that the process was initiated in 2014 year and the facts of the process, also known as BES/GES, took place between 2008 and 2014.

Jose Manuel Espiritu Santo was charged with private corruption, qualified fraud, breach of trust, forgery, computer forgery and infidelity.

Considered one of the largest cases in the history of Portuguese justice, the case brings together 242 investigations into the main trial, which were consolidated, and complaints from more than 300 people, natural and legal, living in Portugal and abroad.

According to the MP, whose indictment was about four thousand pages, the collapse of the Espirito Santo Group (GES) resulted in losses of more than 11.8 billion euros.