The Court of Bragança today acquitted the former mayor of Miranda do Douro Artur Nunes of the crimes of economic participation and malfeasance of which he was accused for allegedly benefiting from a businessman in a deal.
The former head of the municipal works division, Amílcar Machado, accused in the same case of economic participation in business and abuse of power, was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for a year, a decision that his lawyer has already said he will contest.
Artur Nunes was mayor from 2009 until 2021. Amílcar Machado retired as a municipal official in the same year.
The facts described in the prosecution’s indictment, published on the official website of the Attorney General’s Office, date back to 2010.
According to the indictment, “the accused head of division, with the knowledge and consent of the accused mayor, approached a shopkeeper with whom he had a close personal relationship, telling him, even before any contracting procedure, that he would take over the sale and installation of air conditioning on the first floor of the town hall building, at the price he presented”.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, “the businessman immediately ordered the electrical and air conditioning equipment needed for the work, which he did in November 2010 and January 2011”.
The indictment further states that it was only in February 2011 that “the accused head of division proposed the opening of a pre-contractual direct award procedure, proposing the said trader as the entity to be contracted and indicating the value of 42,000 euros that he had presented in the budget”.
The work was awarded for 41,991 euros plus VAT and carried out by the businessman in question, “providing him with profit margins of between 85% and 983% on the material he supplied for installation in the town hall building”, the MP calculated.
During the first session of the trial, the former head of the municipal works division explained that the first floor had undergone intervention with “plasterboard, air conditioning and furniture.
He added that, although the department he led was responsible for the intervention, “it had nothing to do with the project”, which he said had been authorized by the president in office at the time.
Artur Nunes said that he had no contact with the company that had been awarded the contract.
“The only thing I did was tell the technicians that this work was necessary,” said the former mayor.
The work was necessary, explained Artur Nunes, because it was necessary to install service spaces for the One-Stop Shop and the building, which dates back to the Estado Novo, lacked the necessary conditions.
Artur Nunes said that the sustainability of the works was based on “the principle of trust” in the information gathered in advance by the technicians, so that the best price could be chosen.
The winning bid was the only one put out to tender. The criterion for the choice would be the one with the lowest budget.