Diogo Lacerda Machado is, without a doubt, the “best friend” of António Costa, whose wedding he was best man. The relationship between the two dates back to the time of the Faculty of Law at the University of Lisbon and continued in the following decades: it was with Diogo and his wife, Teresa Alvarenga, with whom António Costa and Fernanda Tadeu celebrated their wedding, in a Wedding reception in a burger restaurant in the center of Lisbon. The socialist never dispensed with him, despite his resistance to entering politics. This Tuesday he was arrested.
Lacerda Machado is part of the group “Chicos de Macao”. In 1988, Magalhães e Silva, a lawyer at the office of the socialists José Vera Jardim and Jorge Sampaio, where Costa had interned, would be appointed undersecretary of Administration and Justice of Macau. He needed advisors and asked António Costa for advice, who suggested three names: Lacerda Machado, Eduardo Cabrita and Pedro Siza Vieira; These last two would be more ministers in the Costa governments.
Upon returning from Macau, Lacerda Machado would make a brief foray into politics. He was António Costa’s Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice, in the second Guterres government (1999-2002). There were two years in which he continued to be discreet, but it was he who sowed the first seeds of the Citizen Card and the computerization of records.
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Source: Observadora
