Wall Street closed on the positive side

The New York Stock Exchange closed the session with the Dow Jones down 0.43%, with “the Guimarães Court of Appeal having decided to indict the former president and vice-president of the Montalegre City Council for criminal association, a crime that had been covered in the investigation phase of this process, it was announced today”.

The Guimarães Court of Appeal decided to pronounce that, “the former president and vice-president of the Montalegre Chamber for criminal association, a crime that had been included in the investigation phase of this process, was disclosed today”.

In July, the criminal investigating judge sent the former mayors of Montalegre, former president Orlando Alves and former vice-president David Teixeira, as well as a former employee (head of the works division), to trial for crimes such as malfeasance and money laundering, but dropped the crime of criminal association.

The Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) appealed to the Guimarães Court of Appeal, which revoked the decision of July 15, issued by the Judicial Court of the District of Vila Real (General Jurisdiction Court of Montalegre), in the part in which it did not indict the defendants for the crime of criminal association.

The court ruled “that it be replaced by a new decision that also indicts the three defendants for committing this crime”.

This court granted the Public Prosecutor's appeal in full, considering that the facts described in the public indictment contained all the typical elements of the crime of criminal association for which these defendants (former president, former vice-president and employee) had also been accused.

The defendants can still appeal this decision.

The former mayors, elected by the PS, were arrested in October 2022 by the Judicial Police (PJ), as part of Operation Alquimia, and subsequently resigned from their positions.

The case involves around 70 defendants and crimes such as active and passive corruption, malfeasance, economic participation in business, falsification of documents, undue receipt or offering of advantage, money laundering and also crimes of fraud in obtaining subsidies or grants.

The Public Prosecutor's Office accuses the former president of more than 300 crimes, including malfeasance, economic participation in business, money laundering, document forgery and fraud in obtaining subsidies.

The former mayors are suspected of favoring friends and family in hundreds of public tenders, of systematically resorting to direct adjustment or simplified adjustment, of the artificial division of work or services and of splitting expenses, in a scheme that the prosecution suspects continued between 2014 and 2022.

It was Orlando Alves' defense that requested the opening of an investigation, a process that took place in the Court of Murça, district of Vila Real, due to its size in terms of the number of defendants, lawyers, witnesses and written documentation.