The Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) alleges that Bragança Fernandes, mayor of the municipality from 2002 to October 2017 and current president of the Maia Municipal Assembly, Hernâni Ribeiro, councilor in the current executive, former councilors Ana Vieira de Carvalho and Manuel Nogueira dos Santos, and Albertino da Silva, former executive director of SMEAS - Municipalized Electricity, Water and Sanitation Services, submitted 433 invoices between 2013 and 2018 for expenses with meals and the purchase of computer equipment, totaling almost 53 thousand euros.

"433 expenses with meals were authorized, 233 of which were for meals that took place on Fridays (mainly dinners), weekends and holidays, in high-level or expensive restaurants, and invoking the payment of meals to entities that also received representation expenses", emphasizes the MP.

The defendants requested the opening of an investigation, but the Matosinhos Criminal Investigation Court pronounced (decided to bring to trial) all the defendants in the exact terms of the MP's accusation, a judicial source told Lusa today.

The accusation indicates that the defendants obtained "monetary, economic and computer material benefits that were not due to them, and that were accessible to them through the functions they performed in the structure of SMEAS and in the fraudulent scheme of payment of invoices not due" instituted by them.

As for the current mayor of Gaia, António Silva Tiago, who succeeded Bragança Fernandes in October 2017, he will also be tried in this process for embezzlement, like the other defendants, but for having authorized the payment of some of the invoices in question.

"The members of the Board of Directors [of SMEAS], the defendants Bragança Fernandes, Hernâni Ribeiro, Ana Vieira de Carvalho, Nogueira dos Santos and Silva Tiago, who signed, individually or jointly, the respective 'payment order' were aware of its content, as well as having the power to confront the invoice and the goods described therein, as well as its justification, so it is under these conditions that they assume the authorization of its payment", says the MP.

Speaking to Lusa today, the lawyer for the mayor of Maia, in the district of Porto, clarified that his client "is not accused of having obtained any benefit from meal expenses, but only of having signed the accounting documents that are associated with the payment of such expenses".

"Following a tradition of the services, which for more than 20 years was implemented in the relations between the director of the services and the respective members of the Board of Directors, who trusted the indications that were handwritten on the invoices for each meal subject to each validation", explains Pedro Marinho Falcão.

According to Silva Tiago's lawyer, of the 433 invoices presented by the MP in the accusation, only "five or six invoices" are in question regarding his client.

The accusation also points out flaws in the way the defendants managed SMEAS, "which involved the adoption of perfectly innocuous or non-existent control and 'compliance' procedures".

"The defendants, in a joint effort and in the execution of a plan designed by all, by mutual agreement, allowed the members of the SMEAS Board of Directors and its executive director to make their own sums belonging to SMEAS, corresponding to meals that should have been paid by them", in the amount of almost 53 thousand euros, says the MP.

Read Also: Mayor of Maia and 5 other defendants tried for embezzlement (Portuguese version)