The Braga Court sentenced the former socialist councilor in the Barcelos Chamber Domingos Pereira to two years and 10 months in prison, with a suspended sentence, for having received 10,000 euros to get a job in the municipality.
The accused was also sentenced to the loss of the mandate. EITHER Court charged him with a crime of aggravated passive corruption.
For the suspension of the sentence, Domingos Pereira will have to donate, within six months, 5,000 euros to an institution. The former councilman said he will “obviously” appeal the decision..
At the time of the events, in January 2016, the accused was a councilor of the Municipality of Barcelos, district of Braga, on a non-permanent basis, being responsible, among other matters, for deciding all matters related to the direction and management of the human resources for municipal services.
According to the accusation, on January 25, 2016, a woman, also accused in the case, looked for Domingos Pereira in his office, in the Sala Barcelos, telling him that she wanted his son, who worked in the municipality under a labor insertion contract, after the end of that contract, would be at the service of the municipality.
On that occasion, he will have given the alderman, inside an envelope, 10,000 euros in bills “as compensation for their efforts in this regard”. According to the Public Ministry, the accused, “for this purpose, accepted the aforementioned amount and made it his own.”
The contract, however, did not materialize, because the mayor, Miguel Costa Gomes, by order of May 6, 2016, redistributed the responsibilities and withdrew the powers that were attributed to the defendant.
The court did not prove the circumstances of the delivery of the money, but considered that the money was indeed delivered for that purpose.
The envelope with the 10,000 euros was found about two and a half years later, in July 2018, at the home of Domingos Pereira during Judicial Police searches related to another case.
On the envelope, Domingos Pereira wrote: “This envelope was left on my desk, without my knowing what it was, by María José Figueiredo, on January 25, 2016, to try to employ her son Zé. After telling him that he had to take the envelope, he did not do it, I will return it to her daughter, Dr. Cristina Figueiredo, so that she can give it to her mother, without telling her what is inside her”.
At trial, Domingos Pereira said that it was always your intention to return the moneybut the court did not give credibility to his testimony, considering that the accused did not he managed to explain why he kept the €10,000 in his possession for two and a half years.
“What is evident is that the defendant offered and the defendant accepted”said the presiding judge of the group.
The court considered as mitigating the fact that the act that gave rise to the corruption had not been consummated, since the planned job was not obtained.
In addition, the group stressed that the facts did not reach a very high degree of seriousness, for which they applied a sentence close to the minimum. The defendant was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, also with a suspended sentence.
The court also declared that the 10 thousand euros are lost in favor of the State.
However, with respect to Domingos Pereira, he did not apply the accessory penalty of disqualification from exercising his functions.
Domingos Pereira, for his part, paraded from the PS and founded the independent movement Barcelos, Terras de Futuro (BTF), having been elected councilor in a coalition led by the PSD.
Source: Observadora
