Background of the Case
In 2023, a man was convicted for threatening to kill the President of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. He was detained for illegally accessing the Social Security database, from which he allegedly gathered identification and personal data of hundreds of agents from various security and law enforcement agencies, including the Serviço de Informações e Segurança (SIS), Serviço de Informações Estratégicas e Defesa (SIED), Polícia Judiciária (PJ), and Autoridade Tributária (AT). This information was reported by the magazine Sábado, highlighting that the data matched what was found on a pen drive seized in November 2023 from Vítor Escária, the former chief of staff for ex-Prime Minister António Costa.
Details of the Investigation
Escária claimed he was unaware of the pen drive’s contents, suggesting it had arrived at the Palácio de São Bento with his predecessor. The man, Marco de Aragão, is said to have obtained this sensitive information while he was a senior inspector trainee at Social Security in 2019. He allegedly demanded “500,000 euros in unnumbered 20 and 50-euro notes” from various institutions under the threat of revealing the identities of the agents involved.
On the same day, the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that the Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an inquiry into a violation of state secrets following the pen drive’s seizure. Meanwhile, António Costa’s lawyer stated that the former Prime Minister and current President of the European Council had “absolutely no knowledge” of the situation.
Legal Consequences and Sentencing
The man who threatened the President in 2022 was sentenced to compulsory hospitalization in a medical facility for a minimum of one month and a maximum of three years and four months. Marco de Aragão, considered not criminally responsible, was also ordered to pay a civil compensation of 2,500 euros for non-material damages to his cousin Valter Silva, whom he attempted to implicate in a letter sent to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. This letter included the recipient’s bank account number, to which a transfer of one million euros was to be made, along with a bullet.
The Attorney General’s Office confirmed that an inquiry was opened into a violation of state secrets as part of the Operation Influencer case, which involved the seizure of a pen drive containing a list of agents from intelligence services.
Operation Influencer and its Fallout
Operation Influencer led to the arrests of Vítor Escária, lawyer and consultant Diogo Lacerda Machado, Start Campus administrators Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, and the mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, on November 7, 2023. Other individuals implicated include former Minister of Infrastructure João Galamba, former president of the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente Nuno Lacasta, lawyer João Tiago Silveira, and the Start Campus company.
The case has since been divided into three inquiries related to the construction of a data center in the Sines industrial and logistics area by Start Campus, lithium extraction in Montalegre and Boticas (both in the Vila Real district), and hydrogen energy production in Sines. António Costa, who was linked to this case, faced an inquiry by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Supreme Court of Justice, prompting him to resign as Prime Minister. Following his departure and the consequent loss of special legal protection, the investigation concerning the former official was transferred to the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP).