The Porto Court sentenced 15 defendants linked to an automobile inspection center in that city to suspended prison terms of between one year and eight months and three and a half years, in a case related to fraudulent inspections.
In a statement published this Friday on its website, the Porto Regional Attorney General’s Office (PGRP) reports that the 15 defendants were sentenced for crimes of falsification of technical notation. Two of them were also sentenced for the crime of corruption for an unlawful act, one actively and the other passively.
According to the ruling, dated May 10, the the sentences were suspended for a period of between three and four years on the condition that the defendants deliver 1,000 euros to the National Road Safety Authority.
The defendant convicted of the crime of active corruption was also sentenced to pay the amount of 50 euros to the State, as it is a patrimonial advantage promised to the defendant convicted of the crime of bribery.
The PGRP statement states that the court “essentially proved” the facts contained in the public indictment, and confirmed the indictment, modifying the number of crimes charged, considering that “the conduct assumed by the defendants, by the motivations and the way of acting, was included in the commission of the continued crime.”
One of the defendants was acquitted of the crime with which he was accused, since the court understood that the matter taken for granted, in this particular, “had no criminal significance.”
The cases occurred mostly in 2015, but there are also records of similar situations in 2014 and 2017, involving a total of around 340 vehicles.
The accusation of the Public Ministry (MP) indicates that, in the framework of the ordinary and extraordinary inspections, the defendants “did not submit the vehicles to all the legally established controls, issuing the homologation certificate without such verification or, when it was disapproved, without indicate the necessary repairs to be carried out on the inspected vehicles”.
The MP also says that the defendants acted in “clear violation of the legal and functional duties” to which they were subject and did so with the intention of “reaching for the Inspection Center where they worked, illegitimate advantages, based, from the principle, on the greatest number of vehicle inspections carried out daily, only possible due to the omission of procedures that would have to be observed”.
Source: Observadora
