Gomes Cravinho returns to explain military hospital to parliament on February 8

As a parliamentary source told Lusa, the hearing in the PSD's request was scheduled for February 8 at 10:00 a.m.

This afternoon, in the Foreign Affairs and Portuguese Communities Committee, Minister Gomes Cravinho has already put forward some data on the subject, but this hearing was already scheduled, having been ratified, the PS having abstained, on January 18, in the Defense Committee.

In the application, the Social Democrats list 30 questions to which they consider that João Gomes Cravinho – who oversaw Defense between 2018 and 2022 – did not answer the emergency debate requested by Chega on this subject which took place in plenary on 20 December.

In this text, the PSD also asks that the commission be sent "the reassessment requested by the Minister of National Defense at the time of the audit carried out by the Inspecção-Geral de Defesa Nacional (IGDN), on the conformity legal framework of the administrative and financial framework”. procedures of the direct adjustments of the works of the CAMB [Centro de Apoio Militar de Belém covid-19]”.

At the end of last year, the PSD had filed a request to hear Gomes Cravinho and the current Secretary of State for Defense, Marco Capitão Ferreira, but at the time this had failed, with the PS citing that Chega had already programmed the emergency debate in the presence of the minister.

Operation "Perfect Storm" was launched in December by the Judicial Police (PJ), in coordination with the Public Prosecutor's Office, and resulted in five arrests, including three senior Defense officials and two businessmen, for a total of 19 defendants, which goes back to the period in which João Gomes Cravinho supervised this ministry.

One of the five detained is the former Director General of National Defense Resources Alberto Coelho, who was allegedly involved in the slippage of the requalification works of the military hospital in Belém.

At stake are expenses of around 3,2 million euros in the contract to convert the former military hospital in Belém, Lisbon, into a support center for covid-19, a job that had an initial budget of 750 thousand euros.

The slippage was revealed by an audit by the National Defense Inspectorate (IGDN), which focused on the actions of Alberto Coelho.

After leaving the General Directorate of National Defense Resources, Alberto Coelho chaired the Board of Directors of ETI (EMPORDEF – Tecnologias de Informação, SA) between June 8, 2021 and July 31 of this year, before asking his retirement, according to published information. by the company in Lusa.

The Secretary of State for Defense, Marco Capitão Ferreira, before taking office in government, was president of idD Portugal Defense, the holding company that manages public participations in companies in the defense sector.

The operation, dubbed "Perfect Storm", according to the Judicial Police, is "a criminal investigation whose purpose is to investigate the possible practice, among other things, of offenses of active and passive corruption, embezzlement, participation economic to business, abuse of power and money laundering, illicit acts related to attributions made by a central administration body to various companies, which have caused damage to the Portuguese State of several thousand 'euro'.

ARL // JPS