The lawyer Pedro Bourbon, from Braga, sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder, in March 2016, of the businessman, of whom he had been a friend, João Paulo Fernandes, asked, on request, the judge who oversees the execution of sentences, authorization to give an interview to the SIC television station. The magistrate authorized it, not knowing whether SIC will interview him or not.
As MINHO learned, the lawyer, who now has the European Court of Justice as his last chance to appeal, intends to publicly disclose his thesis of innocence, already expressed when, in 2018, and through the lawyer who defended him, ‘shot’ the possible guilt of the hideous for Emanuel Paulino, known as the Wizard of Areosa, saying that he even feared for life, that is, he felt threatened by the Wizard.
As MINHO reported, the penalties imposed on the perpetrators of the murder, in 2016, in Braga, of businessman João Paulo Fernandes, became final with the recent refusal of the Constitutional Court, for lack of legal basis and already final, in accepting the appeals filed by defendants Adolfo and Manuel Bourbon, Rafael Silva and Hélder Moreira.
Decision that made the sentences of 25 years in prison, for kidnapping, qualified homicide and desecration of a corpse applied to six defendants, in the Court of São João Novo do Porto, and later confirmed by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Justice.
However, the Porto Court of Appeal reduced the sentence of Hélder Moreira to 23 years in jail, considering that he was only an accomplice, not having acted directly in the murder, having only ceded the warehouse. Too bad it went down to 19 years, in the Supreme.
Thus, brothers Pedro, Manuel and Adolfo Bourbon (the first two lawyers by profession), Rafael Silva, and Emanuel Paulino (known as Bruxo da Areosa), will serve 25 years in prison.
In March 2016, the businessman from Braga, João Paulo de Araújo Fernandes, 41, was kidnapped and beaten in front of his eight-year-old daughter in the garage of the apartment building where he lived in Lamaçães.
The next day he was tortured and strangled by the defendants and his body dissolved in sulfuric acid in a warehouse in Valongo.
Purpose of killing
In Court it was proved that the five main defendants organized themselves, creating a human and logistical structure with the purpose of kidnapping the businessman, killing him and making his corpse disappear.
In doing so, they intended to prevent the reversal of a ploy whereby the assets of the victim’s parents were passed on to a society controlled by two of the defendants.
In the execution of the crime, and after having monitored the victim’s routines, on March 11, 2016, four of the defendants went to Braga, in two cars stolen in Porto, at a car trading company.
They approached the businessman at around 8:30 pm that day, “put him inside one of the motor vehicles and took him to a warehouse in Valongo, where they strangled him, ending up dissolving the corpse in 500 liters of sulfuric acid , already in another warehouse, located in Baguim do Monte ”, in the municipality of Gondomar.
Restitution of assets to father of businessman
As a consequence, the conviction of the convictions has, as a consequence, the beginning of the trial, in September, in the Braga Civil Court of a São Paulo action for the restitution of assets, which was scheduled for 2018. In the action, a citizen of Viana do Castelo Vítor Fernando Pereira asks, in the Court, the annulment of the business of sale to Monahome, Ltd. of 19 buildings of the companies of Fernandes Fernandes, father of the murdered businessman. The “fictitious sale” was condemned by the lawyer Pedro Bourbon and by Emanuel Paulino, as a way to hide the assets, from the creditors. Only, they were never returned to Fernando Fernandes.
Compensation to daughter
The ex-wife, the daughter, and João Paulo Fernandes’ parents are now trying to execute the defendants in order to obtain the compensation to be jointly and severally paid for the six defendants: 10 thousand euros for the ex-wife, 495 thousand for the daughter ( property and moral damages), now 11 years old, and 80 thousand for the parents (40 thousand for each). Amounts to which interest is added since the start of the trial in 2017.
The payment, about 100 thousand euros each, is made in solidarity, but the victims can execute the assets of a given defendant, who will then have to take action against the others to get the money back.
Future damage
The condemnatory judgment also foresees the possibility that the main victim, the daughter of the unsuccessful businessman, will suffer “future damages”, material or moral, derived from the fact of having witnessed the abduction of his father and not yet being aware full of what happened to him, that is, not yet knowing that he was killed after being tortured. Damages that will be assessed in terms of “enforcement of judgment”.
On the night of the crime, the girl, seeing her father being assaulted by the kidnappers, still had the discernment to climb the stairs of the garage and go to the pharmacy of the building to ask for help.
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