Lisbon City Council fires two building inspectors convicted of corruption

The Lisbon City Council, chaired by Social Democrat Carlos Moedas, fired two municipal building inspectors convicted last October by a court of corruption crimes.

The decision was made unanimously on Wednesday at a closed meeting of the 17-member executive, a local government source told Luse this Friday.

In May 2022, the Judicial Police announced the arrest of two employees of the Inspection Department of the Lisbon City Council and a citizen who owns a project in the city on suspicion of corruption, collecting “relevant evidence” and confiscating “large sums.” amounts” of money.

Two municipal building inspectors were at that time in preventive detention, and the businessman, pending the progress of the investigation, was subject to a coercive measure prohibiting contact with other people involved in the process.

According to proposals to fire the two inspectors, approved Wednesday at an executive meeting to which Lusa had access, one of the workers was sentenced to a single sentence of five years in prison, suspended for the same period, for co-committing six crimes of passive corruption and six crimes of passive corruption in co-authorship.

“The employee asked for and accepted illegal benefits in exchange for actions or inactions contrary to the functional duties that he was required to perform. The subject always acted freely, voluntarily and consciously, well aware and unable to ignore that all his actions were prohibited and punished by law. “He acted with the highest degree of intent – direct intent – and the degree of disciplinary gravity of the acts he committed is extremely serious,” says the proposal for dismissal following the disciplinary process initiated by the municipality.

As for another official, he was sentenced to one sentence of four years and nine months of imprisonment, suspended for the same period, for committing six crimes of passive corruption.

“Contrary to what was foreseen by their functions, the target parties decided on an unspecified date to contact the property owners who carried out the work without complying with the prior notification requirements of the Lisbon City Council and request sums of money from them. , in exchange for no supervision of these works […]”, which violates the “general duty to pursue the public interest, indemnity, zeal and loyalty,” another proposal also said.

When asked in May 2022 about the arrests on suspicion of corruption, the municipality stated that “transparency and the fight against corruption are a central priority in the work that is carried out every day in the Lisbon City Council.”

Last month, the municipality unanimously approved a Transparency and Corruption Prevention Strategy, which will run until 2026, as part of the municipality’s commitment to act in the interests of a “more honest, transparent and trustworthy organization.”

“The proposal for a Transparency and Corruption Prevention Strategy arose as a result of a broad internal participatory process that included workers, leaders and elected officials, as well as an external process that included input from citizens and organizations from the political, academic, social and business sectors,” the message states the approved document.

The document was subject to a public consultation period of 30 working days, which ran from December 22, 2023 to February 5, 2024, during which 26 proposals were received, “of which 17 were accepted and included in the proposal.”

Currently, the 17-member executive body of the Lisbon Chamber is composed of seven elected members of the Novos Tempos coalition (PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Alliance), who are the only ones with assigned responsibilities and who govern without absolute majority – three from PS, two from PCP, three from Cidadãos Por Lisboa (elected by the PS/Livre coalition), one from Livre and one from BE.