2.6 The Story of Alcochete: The lady's not for turning

As always we'll begin with a quick recap on our last post. Having done so well with tying up the loose threads relating to the accusations of match tickets being sold to fund drug trafficking, some idiot pulled at another loose thread again and once more we found ourselves circumnavigating the roundabouts of Milton Keynes. There was a lot of finger pointing going on, a lot of telling tales on each other in the school yard and as I learned personally right at the end, an absolute shed load of flares raining down on Rui Patrício's goal in the Dérbi de Lisboa in 2018, a move some of the defendants claimed was given the “green light” to happen by the club president Bruno de Carvalho. Given accusations of drug trafficking and the subsequent raids led to nothing, having seen the reaction of Bruno de Carvalho on the sidelines watching the flares rain down, either he's a great actor or I'm calling bullshit. We left you on the headlines that Bruno Jacinto had allegedly confirmed the involvement of both Nuno Mendes and Bruno de Carvalho in the attacks at Alcochete. We'll pick the story back up, not there with the sensationalistic headlines of some of the Portuguese media, but forwarding the clock eight months. And so on with the post…

It's July 10th, 2019 and we're in court for the pre-trial where the lawyers for the defendants are hard at work trying to argue that evidence submitted in the trial should be thrown out on a technicality. Remember what we said earlier about the process of due diligence and the chain of evidence and not being able to simply Tippex things out from an earlier post? Well the prosecution whilst trying to make their cases against the accused of having broken the law, of course have to ensure that they themselves don't break any laws when putting their evidence together. How was evidence obtained and was it done legally? Think about the case against Manchester City which is still ongoing without a judgement at the time of writing where a large part of the original case evidence was obtained by fraudulent means, they were hacked communications. The Premier League club weren't the only victims of the hack, in fact Sporting also found their players contracts winding up being published online but I'm trying to avoid falling down any more rabbit holes so arms out and maintain our balance everyone. In short, the lawyers are going to try everything they can do to see anything potentially damning isn't allowed to be used as evidence. This is why they all get paid the big bucks. Here and now the lawyers of several defendants are asking for the nullity of the evidence during the instructive debate.

Carlos Alves Melo the lawyer for Emanuel Calças, former manager of Sporting's social networks requests the nullity of the evidence, based on the fact that the collection of evidence, namely from mobile phones and their contents, was done with "total absence of judicial control over communication data collected.” 

Oh man I've clearly not done my GDPR refresher course in a while. In short - you didn't tick the right box, which given Vilar has already been fined by the court, you wouldn't be surprised if the prosecution team had dropped another bollock. 

After Melo’s initial submission, his request was signed by 14 more lawyers of the 44 defendants in the case, and Judge Carlos Delca, without attending to the request for nullity, accepted the document, sending a decision to the instructive debate.

Note - that's posh legalese for him passing the buck.

That morning session stood out for another reason, someone got told off for firing his mouth off. Can you guess who? Yes, well done, of course it was Bruno de Carvalho. The former president was pulled up for making comments during an intervention by the prosecutor of the Public Prosecutor's Office, Cândida Vilar. Judge Delca: "Mr. Bruno de Carvalho, I won't tell you to be silent again. You are not here to talk to anyone, nor did you come here to talk to anyone.”

I must say I reckon he could have been an MP, by which this time I actually mean the British member of parliament and not the type of MP which Vilar is which I clearly didn't commit to memory. My bad. 

Vilar is not backing down in her claims against the former club president and maintains the accusation against him in full: "I consider that the evidence stands and has not been invalidated by his statements." These the words of Vilar in her closing arguments. For this reason, she requested that the judge maintain de Carvalho, as a coercive measure, the obligation of daily presentations.

By which one assumes she means she wants him to continue signing in with police every day whilst out on his €70,000 bail. 

Vilar also maintained the charges against all 44 of the defendants, requesting that several of the preventively detainees move to "obligation to stay in the house with electronic surveillance (OPHVE)", including Bruno Jacinto.

Meaning they can all stay at home with a nice police ankle tag to monitor their whereabouts. 

De Carvalho wasn't the only one of the defendants who wasn't happy with Vilar. Elton Camará, the one they call Aleluia, decides to have a pop as well. Vilar was analysing the testimony of the man who admits be being a friend of both William and Jorge Jesus, although it's noted that the latter has not testified in his favour. Not sure how great that friendship bond is, or ever was then. In the court reporting they state that Aleluia: rebelled against Cândida Vilar and was close to leaving the Court.

He did however stay in the room and when Vilar decided to maintain preventive detention on the simple basis that she considered that there was no regret on the part of Camará, to which he became angry. I mean she riles me up and I wasn't even on trial or in the same room.

She's clearly a good wind up merchant. We already know what Camará thought of the tag because we'd previously learned he'd go on to cut it off. 

Miguel Fonseca, lawyer for de Carvalho stated that the accusation of the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) about the attack on Sporting's academy in Alcochete "is a character assassination" to the former president of the club and asked Judge Delca to revoke the measure of coercion of daily presentations.

At the beginning of August the decision was made on all 44 defendants living arrangements for the next few months for want of a better term. All defendants bar one, would be placed under house arrest, all except Mustafá, who will remain in pre-trial detention.

Delca determined that the de Carvalho will have to present himself "fortnightly.”

Good news though he seems to be taking it all incredibly well that he's still named as a defendant, nothing knocking the man off his stride. 

Reacting to the decision of the Barreiro Criminal Investigation Court, he wrote that anyone who "purposely allows" someone to be "slandered, slandered and defamed, is a criminal" and a "coward".

There you go then. I say taking it well. I may have spoken too soon. 

So despite all the appeals, all the attempts to get the cases thrown out, the charges defendants would be tried on lessened et al, everything had a hit a brick wall. Vilar is like the Portuguese Margaret Thatcher ‘The lady is not for turning.’ I'm left wondering years later what if anything Vilar would have done differently? The answer should be everything but that doesn't answer the question of what she would actually do. I get that hindsight is 20/20 vision, but still…

The fact that defendants are being let out of prison feels huge though. Even the period of time that de Carvalho has between reporting to the station had been greatly widened. It's a little wink and a nod that maybe things aren't as serious as they were once being portrayed. Oh no wait… someone didn't follow the correct procedural process meaning they couldn't extend their period on remand. My bad. Genuinely they must rue the day they handed over the prosecution to Cândida Vilar. This makes the defending in the last three to four minutes of CD Tondela at home this season look like our quality by comparison.

If you've read series one you'll have had the best part of 85-90% of the testimony covered. But one man's testimony was missing and it was a biggy too. It wasn't a genuine oversight on my part either, I'd done the hard graft, I just accidentally deleted it along with another load of work. So join us again in our next post when we fast forward all the way to near the end of the testimonials that are being heard and we'll give Mr Nuno Mendes the floor. I think it is the single most interesting piece of testimony that is provided during the entire series of sessions to the court and I don't say those words lightly.