The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) today ordered Portugal to pay more than four thousand euros to lawyer Ricardo Sá Fernandes, in the case of the illegal recording of a conversation with Bragaparques businessman Domingos Névoa.
The ECHR decided that Portugal has to pay Ricardo Sá Fernandes 3,000 euros for moral damages and 1,632 euros in costs and expenses.
At issue is a judicial decision, in 2014, of two judges from the Lisbon Court of Appeal, Almeida Cabral and Rui Rangel, who sentenced the lawyer to the payment of 4,800 euros for illicit recording.
The case goes back to 2006, when Ricardo Sá Fernandes was invited by Domingos Névoa to a meeting in a hotel and secretly recorded the meeting, in which the Bragaparques partner proposed the payment of 200 thousand euros for his brother, José Sá Fernandes and ex-councilman in the Lisbon Chamber, withdrew from the lawsuit that prevented the Braga company from exchanging its land in Parque Mayer for the former Feira Popular, which belonged to the municipality.
In the first decision, in November 2011, Ricardo Sá Fernandes was acquitted by the 4th Lisbon Criminal Court, but Domingos Névoa appealed to the Lisbon Court, which, in April 2012, sentenced the lawyer, referring him to the first court the definition of the penalty.
Then, the decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal quadrupled the amount of the fine that had been imposed by the first instance judges, from 1,200 to 4,800 euros.
The case that opposes lawyer Ricardo Sá Fernandes to partner at Bragaparques Domingos Névoa lasted several years in Portuguese courts and had several episodes of convictions, prescription and acquittal.
The European Court of Human Rights considered that Ricardo Sá Fernandes did not benefit from “a fair process”, in addition to finding “omissions” and “failures”.
For the ECtHR, there is still a lack of impartiality on the part of the Lisbon Court of Appeal.
As part of the Bragaparques case, Domingos Névoa was sentenced in the first instance for active corruption for an unlawful act, but on appeal he was acquitted by the Lisbon Court of Appeal, and was later sentenced by the Supreme Court to five months in prison, for a crime of active corruption for unlawful act, suspended sentence upon payment of 200,000 euros to the public purse.
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