The Mayor of Vila Nova de Gaia reaffirmed today the “total absence” of personal involvement in the Babel Operation that led to the arrest and placing under preventive detention of the Vice Mayor, Patrocínio Azevedo.
“I thinkIhavetheobligation, but also the right, to reaffirm my total lack of personal involvement in any illicit acts in urbanistic or other processes, having always guided my actions by the scrupulous respect for the rules of law and ethics,” said Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues in a statement read at the beginning of the public meeting of the municipal executive.
The mayor stressed that he presides over the municipal activity of all departments with vigilance, involvement, and trust in the performance of all colleagues, something he believes is reciprocal.
Last Tuesday, the day the Judicial Police (PJ) made several searches as part of Operation Babel, including in this chamber, Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues explained that were carried out “actions to obtain the necessary documentation” to process 399/23 on the hiring of CTT for the distribution of the municipal magazine, the alleged hiring of an employee who, after all, does not exist in the municipal universe, as well as on the hiring of the director of the municipal auditoriums and some municipal events.
“These issues were fully clarified through documents or the reasons for their absence, since they do not exist. This process [399/23] has nothing to do with urbanism, being only an extraordinary coincidence with communicational effects”, he stressed.
A day after the PJ searches, and after his name was involved in Operation Babel, the mayor clarified that he was made a defendant in case 399/23 that investigates “public contracting and personnel issues”.
“It was a coincidence that allowed speculation to the vultures and morbid creativity to the digital cretins,” the mayor vindicated today.
In his statement, Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues regretted the fact that people have stopped fighting ideas and ideologies.
And he added: “And the result of this political climate is easy: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, one day nobody will have eyes, nor teeth”.
The deputy mayor of Vila Nova de Gaia, Patrocínio Azevedo, was remanded in custody as part of the Operation Babel investigation, the Criminal Investigation Court (TIC) of Porto announced on Friday.
This main process of Operation Babel focuses on “the vitiation of rules and instruction of urban licensing processes in favor of developers associated with projects of high density and magnitude, being at stake real estate interests in the order of 300 million euros, through the offer and acceptance of counterparts of pecuniary nature”.
The Babel Operation is concerned with crimes of receiving or offering undue advantage, active and passive corruption, prevarication and abuse of power, committed by and on behalf of an official or holder of political office.
