Lisbon, July 15, 2025 (Lusa) - Former prime minister José Sócrates denied in court on Tuesday that he had instrumentalised ministers to carry out illegal acts in the TGV tender, one of the dossiers in which he is accused of having been corrupted by the Lena group.
"It is false that I gave suggestions or guidelines to ministers to instrumentalise them, to carry out acts against their will, illegal acts," said the head of government between 2005 and 2011, on the fourth day of questioning in the Operation Marquês trial.
José Sócrates rejected having discussed details of the tender at a meeting in October 2009 with the then-outgoing Minister for Public Works, Transport and Communications, Mário Lino, and the chairman of the procedure jury.
According to the ex-PM, the meeting took place on Mário Lino's initiative, lasted no more than five minutes and the "only comment" he made at the time was to follow the case law of the Court of Auditors, "however unfounded" it may have been.
The socialist also accused the next government, led by Pedro Passos Coelho (PSD), of having cancelled the project, which was ultimately rejected by the Court of Auditors in 2012.
The tender had been won by a consortium made up of the Lena group, which, with the veto, won the right to compensation of more than €150 million, which has still not been paid.
"You don't ask us to analyse the budgetary appropriateness of a project that was removed from the budget," José Sócrates lamented today.
The former prime minister also accused the government of António Costa (PS) of "political cowardice" for having decided, from 2015, not to go ahead with the TGV, "just because it was Sócrates' project", arrested in November 2014.
The 67-year-old former prime minister has been indicted on 22 counts, including three of corruption for allegedly receiving money to benefit the Lena group, the Espírito Santo Group (GES), and the Vale do Lobo development in the Algarve.
The case has a total of 21 defendants, who are responsible for 117 economic and financial offences.
The trial began on July 3, and more than 650 witnesses are expected to pass through the Lisbon Central Criminal Court.
The defendants have generally denied any wrongdoing.
IB/ADB // ADB.
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