Two former BPP administrators banned from leaving Portugal
Former Banco Privado Português (BPP) administrators Salvador Fezas Vital and Fernando Lima – both sentenced to prison terms – have 48 hours to hand over their passports, as determined by the court.
With the flight of former BPP president João Rendeiro, a judge Tânia Loureiro Gomes from the second Criminal of Lisbon considers it necessary to aggravate the measures of coercion of these defendants, who until then had only been required to deliver the Identity and Residence Term, indicates the court order, accessed by the Lusa agency.
The judge’s decision comes after defendants Fernando Lima and Salvador Fezas Vital have asked, by self-prescription, for a reassessment of their coercive measures. Both also expressed their repudiation of the flight to the uncertain part of the co-defendant João Rendeiro.
Thus, to prevent the departure of Salvador Fezas Vital and Fernando Lima from Portugal, and taking into account the prison sentences of each of the defendants, a judge imposed a ban on leaving the country, forcing them to surrender, within 48 hours, the passports and/or the corresponding documents that they have and that allow them to leave the national territory.
The documents will be learned from the order of the records, at the time they will be delivered to the court and it will still be impossible to issue duplicates, or their renewals, emphasizes the order of Tânia Loureiro Gomes.
In the same document, it is also indicated that it will be communicated, immediately, to the Institute of Registries and Notary what happened so that no system is registered as new imputations, as well as to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The court also asks that all national border control services and entities be notified of the new coercive measure imposed on Salvador Fezas Vital, who is sentenced to 9 years and 6 months in prison, and Fernando Lima, sentenced to six years of prison.
The judges decided to aggravate these two defendants as coercive measures due to the seriousness of offenses for which Fernando Lima and Salvador Fezas are heavily indicted: crimes of qualified tax fraud, qualified breach of trust and money laundering, and verification of certain criminal procedural requirements .
With regard to co-defendant and former BPP administrator Paulo Guichard (a resident of Brazil with the knowledge of the court), a judge considered to be at the time of redefining how coercive measures also faces the seriousness of the crimes for which he is sentenced to 9 years and 6 months in prison – although without a final and unappealable decision – and scheduled a face-to-face hearing for next Friday at 14:00.
As for BPP defendant Mário Jorge Amorim Sampaio da Silva, convicted, still without final judgment in this case, for a crime of money laundering with a penalty of two years in prison – suspended in his execution for an equal period -, the judge ordered the payment of 50 thousand euros to an entity, to prevent the assets from going to waste, and also, within 30 days, the delivery, in the order of the process, of 20 thousand euros as a guarantee.