The Lisbon Court of Appeal (TRL) reversed Judge Ivo Rosa’s decision to lift the seizure of assets that Judge Carlos Alexandre had imposed on the defendant in the BES/GES José Manuel Espírito Santo case.
In a TRL ruling last week, to which the Lusa agency had access on Monday, the judges of the 3rd Criminal Section upheld the appeal filed by the Public Ministry (MP) on the matter, declaring the decision made “non-existent”. on February 18 by Judge Ivo Rosa, which was revoked, so the arrest warrant issued on October 21, 2021 by Judge Carlos Alexandre is maintained, “with all the legal consequences.”
In addition to revoking the decision that lifted the seizure of assets of José Manuel Espírito Santo (Ricardo Salgado’s cousin), the TRL criticizes the fact that the decision made in February by Ivo Rosa ends “by manifestly questioning the merits of the decision” previous (to order the arrest) given by Carlos Alexandre.
“The criminal investigating judge (Ivo Rosa) lacked jurisdictional powers to issue the contested decision“, says the Appeal sentence, considering that “it was not for the detainee (José Manuel Espírito Santo) to raise the nullities and irregularities and invalidity of the decision” of arrest before the criminal investigating judge Ivo Rosa, “but on appeal” to the Relationship.
The TRL understood that Ivo Rosa’s order “is nothing more than a reassessment of the substance of the decision” by Carlos Alexandre and that it motivated the opposition of José Manuel Espírito Santo in relation to the seized assets.
“The criminal investigation judge (Ivo Rosa) who signs the contested sentence pronounces and decides on the sentence (of Carlos Alexandre) already issued on October 21, 2021 as if it were an appeal instance, forgetting that he is invested with the function of the appealed judge and must be placed in a position compatible with the authorship of that other decision, even if he was not a subscriber of it, because it was dictated by a colleague who preceded him in the title of the case in question”, emphasizes the TRL.
“Given that the contested resolution was issued after exhausting the jurisdictional power of the judge who signed it, this resolution does not exist because it was issued by someone who did not have jurisdictional power in relation to the issues raised,” concludes the TRL, giving reason to the appeal filed by the MP.
Ivo Rosa opposes Carlos Alexandre and lifts the seizure of assets of Salgado’s cousin, charged in the BES case
In February, Judge Ivo Rosa decided to reverse a decision by Judge Carlos Alexandre and lift the embargo on all the assets of José Manuel Espírito Santo Silva, Ricardo Salgado’s cousin and former BES administrator, who is accused by the Public Ministry of the practice of eight co-crimes of authorship, including qualified fraud and infidelity, in the BES/GES case.
At stake was the foreclosure of real estate, cars, pensions, and household items, including jewelry, art objects, and watches.
To revoke the embargo, Ivo Rosa invoked that the Public Ministry did not present concrete facts that pointed to a “probable alienation or imminent encumbrance of the assets and consequent well-founded danger of loss of the guarantee of the assets.”
Considered one of the biggest cases in the history of Portuguese justice, this case adds to the main process 242 investigations, which were accumulated, and complaints from more than 300 natural and legal persons, residents in Portugal and abroad. According to the Public Ministry (MP), whose accusation occupied nearly four thousand pages, the disappearance of the Espírito Santo Group (GES) in 2014 caused damages of more than 11.8 billion euros.
Source: Observadora
