According to the STJ ruling, which Lusa had access to today, the judges agreed with the appeal filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP), which requested that the former minister be sentenced to at least five and a half years in prison, above the decision of legal accumulation of the court, in March 2023, which had applied a sentence of five years and one month in prison. "The appeal is considered admissible in this part and it is decided to set the single sentence for the combination of crimes committed by the defendant to five years and six months in prison", reads the ruling signed by judges António Latas, Agostinho Torres and Leonor Furtado. The decision to increase the sentence applied was based on the category of crimes for which Armando Vara was convicted in the two proceedings -- influence peddling (Face Oculta) and money laundering (Operation Marquês) --, recalling that they fall within "highly organized crime" and that they were committed in the normal course of the defendant's activities. "All of them were carried out within the same life framework that the defendant assumed as part of the apparent normality of the social, professional and personal life he led, despite the public positions held by the defendant, both in government and in public administration as well as in banking, which imposed additional duties on him", considered the judges. The STJ also understood that the court of first instance "had overvalued" the time that had already passed between the commission of the crimes and the 2023 ruling, as well as the relevance given to the personal and family integration of Armando Vara, 70 years old. "The defendant framed his illicit activities within his life framework over a considerable number of years, without the proven facts showing that he had been confronted over the years with dilemmas, inner conflicts or consequent reflection on the unlawfulness of his actions, which suggests that his past choices were more rooted in traits of his personality", reads the decision. In addition to the increase in the sentence, the MP's appeal also invoked the nullity of the sentence due to the lack of enumeration of proven facts in the grounds and due to the omission of a ruling, either because it understood that last year's ruling had not analyzed the discount of the periods of deprivation of liberty served by Armando Vara in the single sentence, or because of the applicability of the pardon that the former minister received in the Face Oculta case. According to the STJ's decision, there was indeed an omission of a ruling, which is why the process was ordered to be sent to the first instance to fill the omissions, and the court must indicate whether or not the pardon remains. Armando Vara had been sentenced to a five-year prison sentence in the Face Oculta case, for three crimes of influence peddling, and was released from the Évora Prison Establishment in October 2021, after serving about three years, due to the application of exceptional measures related to the covid-19 pandemic. However, in July 2021, the court sentenced him to two years in prison for money laundering in the Operation Marquês case. [News updated at 12:50 pm] Read Also: Relação rejeita recurso de Sócrates e confirma julgamento por corrupção (Portuguese version)