The Minister for Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, said today that he was “completely calm” about the searches at Cascais Town Hall, asking that “justice be allowed to work” because “scrutiny is healthy”.
“I’ve been in public life for 20 years, I’m completely used to this scrutiny, it’s healthy, let’s let justice work,” Pinto Luz told journalists in a short response on the steps of parliament.
The then deputy mayor of Cascais also assured that he was “completely calm”.
The suspicions that led to the search of the Cascais Town Hall, related to a factory producing surgical masks for Covid-19, may constitute crimes of passive and active corruption, prevarication and abuse of power, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday.
The searches carried out by the Judiciary Police (PJ) at Cascais Town Hall began on Wednesday morning and ended shortly after 15:30.
The mayor, Carlos Carreiras (PSD), said he was not surprised by the searches and explained that they stemmed from a report that the Court of Auditors drew up following inspections of the mask factory.
The mayor also said that the Cascais City Council had contested the report because it considered that “there were no irregularities”, stating that this is “what will be ascertained” with these searches.
Carreiras said he had a “clear conscience” and claimed to be the only person responsible for the whole mask factory process, absolving his then vice-president, Miguel Pinto Luz (now Minister of Infrastructure and Housing), as well as the other councillors.
The social democrat also revealed that, in addition to the town hall, the PJ was searching computer systems in the São José Building, where the municipality’s Urban Planning services operate, in the Cascais Center and in the municipal company that managed the communication process related to the masks.
In June 2020, the municipality launched its own production of personal protective surgical masks for the population, with equipment from China, also supplying other municipalities.
On Wednesday, the Judicial Police (PJ) collected documents from the PSD headquarters in Lisbon as part of a case related to the party’s presidential campaign, which also includes the municipal company Cascais Próxima.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, there are no defendants in this case and the investigation is being held in secret.
Searches at Cascais Town Hall on suspicion of corruption, malfeasance and abuse of power
