The Vila Nova de Gaia Chamber revealed this Saturday, November 29th, that it had ordered an audit of the Skyline/Cultural and Congress Center project, which took former socialist vice-president Patrocínio Azevedo to court, along with 15 other defendants, on suspicion of corruption.
“[A autarquia] has already ordered a true audit of this entire absurd legal-urban construction”, said the municipal executive, led by the social democrat Luís Filipe Menezes, in a statement.
The information comes after the panel of judges at the Court of Gaia, where the Operation Babel trial is taking place – related to the alleged tampering and violation of standards and instruction in urban planning licensing processes in Gaia -, announced that the municipality, in the district of Porto, had given up on being an assistant and the compensation of 50 thousand euros that it requested in that process.
“The municipal executive, in a decision that will take the chamber meeting, decided to withdraw the request for civil compensation in the Babel case. In fact, the previous executive, who fought so hard in recent months for the innocence of the main target, the former vice-president, should have already done so”, he pointed out.
According to current municipal leadership, “which is very serious, and must be investigated and investigated in every detail, it is a public-private partnership, in the opinion of the executive, illegal, without public tender, in violation of the Municipal Master Plan (PDM) and which exchanges hundreds of millions of euros granted to a private group to the detriment of a return, in 25 years, of ten million euros”.
At stake, he added, is a “very serious legal and urban planning operation”, which was the collective responsibility of the chamber.
The Skyline/Cultural and Congress Center project envisaged the construction of apartments, a hotel, a congress center, an urban square and a car park, but no progress was made on the land.
“Justice should not rely on specific scapegoats, it has to get to the bottom of the problem – and we even admit that it is already doing so collaterally”, he stressed.
Operation Babel has 16 defendants, including the former vice-president of the Chamber of Gaia Patrocínio Azevedo, real estate businessmen Paulo Malafaia and Elad Dror and lawyer João Pedro Lopesaccused of dozens of economic crimes such as corruption and influence peddling.
The Public Ministry (MP) maintains that Elad Dror, founder of the Fortera group, and Paulo Malafaia “agreed to develop real estate projects in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, namely the so-called Skyline/Cultural and Congress Center, Riverside and Hotel Azul”, counting on the alleged favoritism on the part of Gaia’s former deputy, who would receive money and material goods, such as watches, in exchange.
The trial, which began in January, is in the final phase and, since Thursday, the MP’s prosecutors have been making their arguments, which should be concluded on Tuesday.