The hearing of three witnesses as part of the investigation of the BES/GES process was postponed until the end of January due to the judicial questioning of the 35 suspected of enslaving migrants in Alentejo, a source linked to the process told Lusa.
According to the source, the hearing of the three witnesses, including Christopher de Beck, former vice president of the BCP, is scheduled for January 27, already close to the end of the term determined in June this year by the BCP Superior Council. Judiciary (CSM) for completing the investigation phase of this process whose main defendant is the former banker Ricardo Salgado.
The postponement derives from the need to use the room where the proceedings of the BES/GES case are usually carried out, which is one of the largest in the Central Criminal Investigation Court (TCIC), to question the 35 suspects arrested this Wednesday. by the Police Judiciary in the framework of an investigation, initiated approximately a year ago, to an alleged international criminal network that hired foreign workers for agriculture in Baixo Alentejo????????
PJ detains 40 people on suspicion of human trafficking in a network that exploited hundreds of immigrants in Alentejo
On June 1, the CSM gave Judge Ivo Rosa, who was in charge of the investigation at that time, a period of eight months to complete this procedural phase, which referred to February 2023.
The judge, for his part, was promoted to the Lisbon Court of Appeal – whose effectiveness is pending the conclusion of a disciplinary process – and replaced in the TCIC by judge Pedro Santos Correia.
The BES/GES process initially had 25 defendants (18 people and seven companies) and then five more people were added, but three companies are no longer sued, leaving now 27 defendants (23 people and four companies).
Considered one of the largest cases in the history of Portuguese justice, this case adds 242 investigations to the main process, 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 took up nearly four thousand pages, the bankruptcy of Grupo Espírito Santo (GES), in 2014, caused damages of more than 11.8 billion euros.
Source: Observadora
