Portugal quietly closes “largest case of tax fraud and money-laundering”

In the panoply of cases of embedded corruption, cronyism, money-laundering and general financial malfeasance, the Monte Branco investigation was always billed by the nation’s media as ‘one of the largest’. Yet almost a week ago, after 15 years on the docket – and the promise of formal accusations back in 2018 – it was archived. No one was arrested: no one was even ever accused.

Prosecutors today however insist Monte Branco led to “major tax recoveries, and provided evidence for Operation Marquês and BES (Banco Espírito Santo) investigations” – also probes that have spent an enormous amount of time, and money, essentially getting nowhere.

Many will query this ‘result’.

In a statement released yesterday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office stresses the ‘up side’ of the last 15 years of investigation: the Portuguese State has been able to recover more than €30 million through ‘tax regularisations’, it says.

As Expresso explains, Monte Branco “involved investigations into aggravated tax fraud and money laundering linked to “an informal fund transfer service between Portugal and abroad” which, through bank accounts in Switzerland and Portugal, allowed clients to convert into cash money deposited in accounts whose beneficiaries were unknown.”

But, as so often happens in these long drawn-out cases, (viz. BES’ former president Ricardo Salgado spared jail time due to suffering now from Alzheimer’s Disease), people’s situations change. In a number of cases, people actually die – and therefore the culmination of an investigation becomes mired in ‘blank spaces’.

This is what appears to have happened here.

According to the statement, reasons for closing the case included the amnesty for tax crimes granted through adherence to RERT III, the defendants’ “voluntary regularisation” of taxes owed, the death of defendants leading to the termination of criminal proceedings, and the fact that in some cases the amounts involved were so small that they did not warrant criminal punishment.

One of the defendants who died before the investigation was completed was, according to reports at the time, the owner of a currency exchange office in downtown Lisbon who was allegedly at the centre of the fund transfer scheme, writes Expresso.

“With regard to the remaining facts, it was not possible to gather sufficient evidence that the funds had an illicit origin or constituted income not declared in Portugal in a manner that would meet the legal definitions of tax fraud or money laundering,” DCIAP, the department of criminal investigation and penal action concluded.

Sources: Expresso/ RTP

Natasha Donn

Journalist for the Portugal Resident.