The former prime minister and defendant in Operation Marquês, José Sócrates, condemned this Wednesday, November 26, the alleged choice of judge Carlos Alexandre to head the Commission to Combat Fraud in the National Health Service (SNS).
In a public statement, Sócrates considered that the position “was created especially to accommodate this choice”. “The appointment proves – without remission – the political bias that he exuberantly exhibited during the investigation into the Marquês case,” he wrote.
He classified the appointment as being “shameful, to use the expression that the Prime Minister recently brought into the public space”.
According to the resolution published this Wednesday in Republic Gazettethe Commission to Combat Fraud in the SNS will be chaired by a magistrate and will have permanent members from the Judiciary Police, the General Inspectorate of Health and Finance and Infarmed.
It is said that the name of the magistrate who will head this commission will have to be approved by the Council of Ministers, but Jornal de Notícias said this Wednesday that it will be Carlos Alexandre, the judge who led media cases such as Operation Marquês or the BES case.
This commission’s mission is to “centralize, coordinate and execute the fraud prevention and detection strategy within the scope of the SNS, in coordination and cooperation with the competent entities to carry out disciplinary, financial and criminal responsibilities”.
Faced with the news of the magistrate’s appointment, José Sócrates states that “there is a lot to say” and draws a comparison with what happened in Brazil, when Lula da Silva, the current Brazilian president, was detained. “For now, let’s stick with the analogy of lawfare Brazilian. The chronicle of this appointment of Carlos Alexandre is similar to that of judge Sérgio Moro. There, the judge arrested the political opponent and received the minister’s award from Bolsonaro; here, the payment comes, carefully, eleven years after my arrest in the marquis trial”, says the former head of Government.
“There, as here, the choice of judges was swindled – here with fraud in distribution, there with cheating in the choice of jurisdiction”, he argues.
According to José Sócrates, who promises to “return to the subject”, now “all that’s missing is the ‘Christmas gift’ already promised by the Attorney General to the Prime Minister”.