State Ministry accepts neurological examination of Ricardo Salgado, court decision May 24

The Lisbon Court of Appeal will decide on May 24 whether to allow Ricardo Salgado to conduct a neurological examination as part of a separate process of Operation Marquez, with the Ministry of Health agreeing to the examination.

A Relação de Lisboa source told Lusa that at a hearing this Wednesday, as part of the appeals filed by the former banker’s defense and the Ministry of Public Administration (MP) against a sentence of six years in prison for three crimes of breach of trust, the prosecutor’s office agreed to conduct an independent investigation. in relation to the former president of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine.

According to the same source, Deputy Attorney General Joaquim Moreira da Silva agreed with the MP’s appeal, who is in favor of extending the ex-banker’s sentence from six to 10 years in prison, but agreed to undergo a neurological medical examination to determine whether “there is no Ricardo Salgado in able to understand what prison is,” due to his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

The source explained that it was about the fact that the defense claims that Ricardo Salgado “suffers from Alzheimer’s disease in an advanced degenerative phase that prevents him from serving a prison sentence”, while the MP agrees that the degree of the disease (which was attributed to former president of BES neurologist Joaquim Ferreira) is currently being evaluated.

The Lisbon Relation MP, according to the source, upheld the first instance conviction and rejected any invalidity of the March 2022 decision at Lisbon’s Central Criminal Court.

Another source connected with the trial told Luce that the prosecutor’s office “agreed that the verdict could not be handed down without an expert examination of the defendants,” taking into account the medical reports provided by the defence.

If the Lisbon Court of Appeal decides that an investigation should be held, according to this source, there will be no alternative but to overturn the first instance decision in this case, as the former banker’s lawyers petitioned for the decision to be invalidated due to an omission of pronunciation based on a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Since the trial, Ricardo Salgado’s defense has repeatedly called for an independent medical examination of the former banker, with the Cascais Civil Court recently authorizing the procedure.

State prosecutors demanded a sentence of at least 10 years in prison for the former GES leader for three crimes of breach of trust, while lawyers Francisco Proenza de Carvalho and Adriano Schilacce demanded that Ricardo Salgado be acquitted, highlighting his 77 years. years and the illness he suffers from.

The former banker was charged with 21 crimes in the Operation Marquez trial, but in a directive on April 9, 2021, Judge Ivo Rosa dropped almost all charges. Ricardo Salgado was prosecuted for just three breach of trust offenses due to handing over more than 10 million euros to be litigated in a separate process.