"This accusation is a dying chicken waiting for a fair court to give it the final blow. But the prosecutor looks at this dying chicken and sees a white swan flying. This accusation is a dying chicken, it has no merit and we just have to bury it," said lawyer Ricardo Sá Fernandes in his final arguments in the trial underway at the Lisbon Central Criminal Court.

Manuel Pinho's representative assured that he has "moral certainty" that the former government official "is not corrupt", invoking his knowledge and in-depth analysis of the case.

"I know that the Public Prosecutor's Office, the media and the country expect Manuel Pinho to be convicted, because it is good to have a corrupt person to present to the country," the lawyer stressed, adding that "whoever attended this trial and heard the almost 120 witnesses, knows that nothing is left of it".

Ricardo Sá Fernandes admitted the existence of "a corruption problem in Portugal" and argues that it must be fought, but rejected that this be done in relation to his client.

"We cannot, in the name of this problem, condemn the innocent. They want to present [Manuel Pinho] as a scapegoat for some failure in the fight against corruption," he said.

Manuel Pinho's lawyer also pointed to the corruption in the EDP Case for another focus, alluding to another line of investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office within this process: "We have a corruption problem. And in this case we certainly have a case of corruption. All that remains is to know who was the corrupter and the corrupt. And in this case it was Odebrecht and there was a 'Prince'. It is proven, there is material evidence in this case, we just don't know who the Prince is".

The lawyer also criticized prosecutor Rui Batista for the arguments used in the final arguments made the day before, considering that he justified all the facts of the case with the absence of explanations other than corruption.

"The prosecutor's arguments follow an argument. The argument he uses for all situations, without any exception, is that there is no other explanation. He knows that there is no evidence of this, so the intellectual line is that there is no other explanation and he sews it very well with the considerations about the indirect evidence," he summarized, before the session was interrupted for lunch, resuming in the afternoon for the continuation of the arguments.

Manuel Pinho, under house arrest since December 2021, is being tried in the EDP case for passive corruption for illicit act, passive corruption, money laundering and tax fraud.

His wife, Alexandra Pinho, is charged with money laundering and tax fraud - in material co-authorship with her husband -, while the former president of BES, Ricardo Salgado, is charged with active corruption for illicit act, active corruption and money laundering.

Read Also: Nine years in prison for Manuel Pinho? "I don't think that will happen," says Manuel Pinho (Portuguese version)