The trial is scheduled to begin on October 15, and Judge Helena Susano issued an order on Wednesday asking the defendants and assistants to comment on the possible recognition of the statute of limitations for crimes committed by the former banker and other defendants.
The document, which Lusa also had access to, is accompanied by a table listing the crimes approaching the statute of limitations: document forgery and infidelity.
According to the table, Ricardo Salgado has already seen one crime of forgery expire on August 7, referring to a document between late 2013 and early 2014 with a declaration attributed to the government of the Fonden entity. On August 28, two other crimes expired: one of infidelity, for using BES in December 2013 in operations with BES London, and another for falsifying a contract between ES Tourism Europe and another entity.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) survey of crimes at risk of expiration indicates that the former banker may see one more crime of forgery expire on November 24 and two others at the end of December. In the first quarter of 2025, three more crimes of document forgery will expire in January, one of infidelity at the end of February, and three more of infidelity by March 28.
However, there are still 11 defendants in the process also known as Universo Espírito Santo with various crimes that have expired or will expire by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
These include Francisco Machado da Cruz (5 crimes, two of which have already expired), Amílcar Morais Pires (4, one already expired), Pedro Góis Pinto (3, one already expired), Pedro Almeida e Costa (2, one already expired), Cláudia Boal Faria (2), Etienne Cadosch (2, one already expired), Michel Creton (2, one already expired), João Alexandre Silva (2, one already expired), Nuno Escudeiro (1) and Paulo Nacif Jorge (1 which has already expired).
Contacted by Lusa, lawyer Francisco Proença de Carvalho, who represents the former BES president, did not want to comment on this situation.
The trial of the Universo Espírito Santo criminal case will begin more than a decade after the collapse of the Espírito Santo Group (GES) in August 2014. The main defendant is former BES president Ricardo Salgado, accused of 65 crimes, including criminal association, active corruption, document forgery, qualified fraud, and money laundering.
Considered one of the largest cases in Portuguese judicial history, this case combines 242 inquiries in the main process, which have been appended, and complaints from more than 300 individuals and entities, both resident in Portugal and abroad.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the collapse of GES may have caused losses exceeding 11.8 billion euros.
