He left, kept hanging around, and now he’s officially back. Vítor Escária was in São Bento as economic advisor to Prime Minister António Costa (after having already assumed the same functions in the government of José Sócrates), when, in the summer of 2017, he was forced to resign before being constituted an accused in the case of trips paid by Galp to Euro 2016. Recent changes in the judicial process, however, have led to the opening of the São Bento door: according to the Observer, the six-month period for the provisional suspension of the process has ended in July, the defendants paid an “injunction” to the state and, after the deadline, the case was closed. In the case of Escária, the fine was 1,200 euros. Not a month later, the door to São Bento opens.
What is certain is that, since his dismissal, the economist has remained close by. In 2018, almost a year after he resigned, as the Observer reported, was seen coming side by side with Costa to the Prime Minister’s office as a consultant for the negotiation process of the European Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework and for the preparation of the next Community framework within an organization under the Government’s control, Agency for Development and Cohesion. In other words, he was an advisor after he ceased to be one. At the time, the prime minister’s office made a point of underlining to the Observer that the chance was due to a “ride” and that Escária was not working in António Costa’s office.
Two more years later and Vítor Escária was seen again with António Costa in a peculiar photograph: alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Vikor Órban, during a preparatory meeting for the tense European Council that would decide the post-pandemic European financial framework. Escária appeared there, again, as a government consultant, with ties to the Agency for Development and Cohesion, after he ceased to be.
Now, three years after he ceased to be an economic advisor to the Prime Minister because of the alleged undue receipt of an advantage in the Galpgate process, Vítor Escária returns through the big door: the economist was this Monday appointed prime minister’s chief of staff, António Costa, replacing Francisco André, who will take on the permanent representation of Portugal to the OECD, in Paris. The news was advanced by a source from the prime minister’s office to the Lusa agency.
Vitor Escária, 48, an economist and professor in the Department of Economics at ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, became accused prosecutors in the Galpgate case in May 2019, but the case was closed in July. As a source familiar with the case explained to the Observer, after a first investigating judge denied the provisional suspension of the case, a second judge made the request and both the prosecutor and the defendants accepted. Notification of the provisional suspension of the case would arrive in January, with a period of six months. Result: ended in July. After the suspension, the case would be closed as long as the defendants, during that period, did not incur the same crime.
The provisional suspension of proceedings is, in practice, a provisional filing that implies the payment of a fine and, after a certain period, becomes definitive, provided that the accused does not return to practice the same crime. That was what happened. According to the same source, it is not exactly an agreement because there is no assumption of guilt and both parties maintain their conviction: what there is is an assumption on the part of the judge that the facts do not seem sufficiently relevant to go to trial . “The Public Prosecutor’s Office maintains the conviction that a crime was committed, and that the defendants do not accept the defendants to commit a crime,” says the same source, although there is no trial or sentence.
Like the Observer explained in January, when the six-month period during which the defendants could not incur the same crime in order to see the case closed, the fines imposed on the politicians involved in the process ranged from 650 euros to 4,800. These were the injunctions proposed at the time by the judge responsible for the case: Fernando Rocha Andrade (4,800 euros), Jorge Oliveira (3,500 euros), Vítor Escária (1,200 euros), his wife Susana (650 euros), Álvaro Beijinha (4,000 euros) , Nuno Mascarenhas (3,800 euros), Pedro Sousa Matias (1,000 euros) and Luís Ribeiro Vaz (1,200 euros). By paying these fines, the defendants would benefit from filing the case file.
At stake is the so-called Galpgate, the case in which several political officials traveled to France to watch Portugal’s matches at Euro 2016 at the invitation of the oil company, and which made several casualties in the summer of 2017, with emphasis on three exonerated ex-governors – then Secretary of State Fernando Rocha Andrade (Tax Affairs), Jorge Oliveira (Internationalization) and João Vasconcelos (Industry), meanwhile deceased – as well as António Costa Vitor Escária’s former aide, his wife Susana Escária and the mayors Álvaro Beijinha (Santiago do Cacém), Nuno Mascarenhas (Sines), as well as Pedro Sousa Matias (ex-chief of staff of João Vasconcelos and current president of the ISQ Group) and Luís Ribeiro Vaz (former administrator of ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal). In May last year, the investigation phase came to an end with the Public Prosecutor’s Office bringing a charge against 16 defendants, including the two former secretaries of state, Vítor Escária and Carlos Costa Pina (administrator of Galp and former secretary of state) of José Sócrates). All were accused of the crime of undue receipt of advantage.
The process was complex, as Explain the Observer, but ended up with judge Anabela Rocha decreeing that only Galp’s managers would go to trial, leaving the political leaders involved in the process only subject to the payment of a fine (the so-called “injunction”), when decreeing the provisional suspension of the process for a period of six months. Deadline that ended in July.
In June 2018, a year after the controversy of trips to Euro 2016 broke out, António Costa was seen, upon arrival for a meeting with the Left Block in his office, side by side with his former economic advisor, Vítor Slag. As the Observer wrote at the time, the economist did indeed enter António Costa in the Terreiro do Paço building, where the prime minister’s office was provisionally installed, although he had left his duties in the office for almost a year. “It was a ride, they were together in the same place. It was just that, a ride, ”the government source explained to the Observer at the time. “He is not working in Costa’s office” and “did not participate in the State Budget meeting with Catarina Martins”, the same source continued.
In fact, Escária was acting as a consultant to the Prime Minister for the process of negotiating the European Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework and for preparing the next Community framework. “Vítor Escária coordinates a team from the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão [onde é professor auxiliar] which is advising the Government, through a contract signed with the Development and Cohesion Agency, in the process of negotiating the EU Multiannual Financial Framework and preparing the future Community Framework Portugal 2030, in the definition of Public Policy Instruments, model governance, etc. ”, replied to the Observer official source of the Minister of Planning and Infrastructure, at the time.
In other words, it was part of the Development and Cohesion Agency, a public institute created in 2013 to coordinate the “structural and regional development policy co-financed by European funds”, which was under the tutelage of the then Minister of Planning and Infrastructure, Pedro Marques .
António Costa recovers advisor who resigned due to trips to Euro2016
Vítor Escária was the main economic advisor to José Sócrates between 2005 and 2011. Due to his ties to Venezuela, which he started promoting at the time when José Sócrates was prime minister and maintained when he moved to the private sector, he was involved in Operation Marquis, where he testified only as a witness.
The process revealed contracts for the construction of 12,512 homes by Grupo Lena (by Joaquim Barroca and Carlos Santos Silva, a friend of Sócrates) in Venezuela, followed by the Portugal-Venezuela Monitoring Committee. This served for the prosecution of Operation Marquis to attribute to José Sócrates a crime of corruption for the fact that he used the position of prime minister “for the benefit of the Lena Group, in exchange for receiving patrimonial advantages to which he knew he was not entitled”.
For this purpose, Socrates would have “relied on employees who were close to him and of his trust, in order, according to his instructions, to provide specific support to the Lena Group”. Prosecutor Rosário Teixeira, according to the Observer in 2018, he suspected that Vítor Escária was one of those collaborators, but the economist was not accused of any crime.
Vítor Escária also maintained links to Venezuela through the company Iguarivarius, where he worked from 2012. The food and non-food company earned more than 200 million in public contracts with Venezuela, but ended up becoming famous at Christmas 2017 when was accused of economic sabotage by the Venezuelan president. Nicolás Maduro then accused Portugal of sabotaging Caracas’ import of ham.
Before that moment of rupture, Vítor Escária had a connection with Iguarivaris, from Grupovarius, led by Alexandre Cavalleri. So much so that in 2014, José Sócrates’ former economic advisor became a partner in the family holding company: Ribeiro Carvalho Cavalleri, SGPS, SA, which controlled Iguarivarius.
As a witness in Operation Marquis, Vítor Escária told other episodes, such as when José Sócrates asked him to indicate companies that would build residences for the athletes who were going to visit Mozambique as host of the Pan-African Games. In 2008, during a state dinner hosted by the then Mozambican president Armando Guebuza to José Sócrates, the prime minister called Escária to the table and, as he himself told the prosecutor Rosário Teixeira, there was a curious moment:
In Africa it is a bit surreal because we are not in a room all having dinner together. On a podium is a presidential table [com Guebuza e Sócrates], they are up there, then the people are down here. He [Sócrates] give me a sign, I have to go up, go behind him (…) and he says to me: ‘Who do we have here from Portuguese companies that can make houses (…)’ ”.
It was then that Escaria looked around “and said: ‘(…) around the table was eng. António Mota, from Mota Engil, and Pedro Gonçalves, from Soares da Costa, (…) who were the two Portuguese companies with the greatest implementation in Mozambique – perhaps the only ones that have the capacity for this’. José Sócrates replied immediately: ‘Call me here. António Mota ‘. I went down [do palanque], I went to call eng. António Mota – so all this during a banquet – eng. António Mota goes up and then they agree that it was necessary to do I don’t know how many houses, which had to be built in nine months (…) ”
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