In a matter of a few hours, Portugal was placed in a situation of political crisis yesterday, with the quick resignation presented by Prime Minister António Costa and accepted by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in a pair of visits by the Socialist head of government to the palace of Belém
In the morning, up to 40 searches were carried out throughout the country, including Costa's official residence, the offices of the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff and the Ministries of Environment and Infrastructure, in addition to other public bodies and homes of several members of the Government. In the operation, which mobilized 140 police officers, crimes of prevarication, influence peddling and corruption were investigated, among other economic and financial crimes. These are alleged irregularities in the government management of lithium extraction and green hydrogen production projects.
A statement from the Attorney General's Office (Fiscalia) issued this morning announced that Costa would be investigated by the Supreme Court after several suspects declared that he intervened in the projects under investigation. Meanwhile, five people were arrested, including Costa's chief of staff, Vítor Escária.
After meeting for the second time, around two in the afternoon, with President Rebelo, António Costa announced his resignation in a televised statement and said that "I am closing this stage with a clear conscience. It is incompatible with the exercise of the role of prime minister to be under criminal suspicion". In any case, he insisted on his innocence: "I want to say, face to face with the Portuguese, that the practice of any illegal act, or even reprehensible, does not weigh on my conscience", which is why he said that he was "totally available to cooperate with justice in anything he thinks necessary to know the whole truth, whatever the case may be."
"I am not re-presenting my candidacy for the position of prime minister. It's a stage of life that has ended", Costa pointed out, adding that "criminal proceedings are rarely fast".
President Rebelo accepted the resignation of a head of government with whom he has had disagreements, and called for today meetings with all the political parties with parliamentary representation, one after the other, which will last the whole day. And for tomorrow, Thursday, a session of the Council of State to continue a process that may culminate in the dissolution of the Assembly.
The president of the Socialist Party, Carlos César, pointed out yesterday afternoon that Costa "does not face any notable formal accusation". Faced with the announcement that he will not be a candidate again, the party could propose another name to head the Government, or go for new elections. César said that the PS is ready for "either of the two circumstances".
Hours before Costa's resignation, several deputies had already condemned this new scandal. Rui Rocha, the leader of the Liberal Initiative (IL) party, and André Ventura, deputy of the far-right party Chega, had asked for his resignation and both are calling for elections. Ventura qualified that "this does not mean that António Costa is guilty or that any of the others involved are guilty, but yes, at this moment it is very likely that justice will find some suspicions in the conduct of the current ministers and the prime minister ". The Communist Party and the Bloc d'Esquerra, on the other hand, referred to the end of the investigations and alluded to an alleged populist maneuver behind Costa's resignation.
André Ventura, however, insisted on these data: "As far as I can remember, it is the first time in the history of Portuguese democracy that the head of a prime minister's office has been arrested", the first time "that there are searches in the official residence of the Prime Minister", and even the first time "that an investigation is opened in the Supreme Court, independently, against the Prime Minister".
Among those arrested, there is the aforementioned Vítor Escária, the mayor of Sines, the socialist Nuno Mascarenhas; two managers of the company Start Campus, a lawyer hired by this company and a consultant and old friend of Costa, Diogo Lacerda Machado.
The Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action have been investigating contracts for the exploitation of lithium and green hydrogen since 2019. On the one hand, there is the lithium business, in which Portugal leads production on a European scale and in which they are analyzing the exploration concessions for this mineral in the deposits of Romano (Montalegre) and Barroso (Boticas). As for green hydrogen, it is a project, already cancelled, of a production plant – as part of an energy decarbonisation plan – in the municipality of Sines, where would have given favorable treatment to a consortium formed by the Portuguese companies EDP, Galp and REN, among others. In Sines, the project of a data center is also being investigated by the company Start Campus. The Prosecutor's Office suspects influence peddling and corruption.
This scandal has dented the already deteriorated image of António Costa, who at the beginning of the year was splashed by the crisis that generated a compensation of half a million euros to the Secretary of State of the Treasury Alexandra Reis for going -voluntarily leave TAP, the Portuguese flag airline. Another of the most famous names in this case is that of João Galamba, Minister of Infrastructure, whose resignation was already demanded in May by the opposition, due to his responsibility in the supervision of TAP. Galamba then presented a resignation that was not accepted by Costa in full disagreement with President Rebelo de Sousa.
Now, the Prosecutor's Office has declared Galamba and the Minister of the Environment, Duarte Cordeiro, accused of the lithium and green hydrogen businesses. In January, when the Prosecutor's Office announced that it was investigating a case about the lithium and green hydrogen businesses, both led by Galamba, when he was questioned about a possible investigation, he stated to the newspaper Jornal de Notícias that "he had not never heard of this absurd process, precisely because it is absurd and empty”.
