The Public Ministry (MP) today requested the sentencing of former Benfica president Luís Filipe Vieira to a suspended sentence of at least three years and nine months in prison in the Saco Azul case.
In the final arguments of the trial, in Lisbon, prosecutor Cláudia Caldas also argued for the application of the same sentence to the former executive director (CEO) of Benfica Domingos Soares de Oliveira and the club’s former financial director Miguel Moreira.
At issue are crimes of qualified tax fraud and falsification of documents, related to an alleged scheme by the defendants to, using fictitious IT consultancy contracts, withdraw more than 1.8 million euros from Benfica, which will then, in large part, be returned to the club in cash.
“From the evidence it appears that the aforementioned plan was the initiative of the defendant Luís Filipe Vieira”, considered the magistrate today, adding that the former president of the ‘incarnados’ later “made the plan known” to Domingos Soares de Oliveira and Miguel Moreira, which they adhered to and of which, due to the functions they performed, they could not fail to be aware of.
The allegedly simulated contracts were signed between the company Questãoflexível and Benfica Estádio and paid by the latter and Benfica SAD, with the prosecutor defending today that these three companies be sentenced to fines.
The case also includes three more defendants – the owner of Questãoflexível, José Bernardes, and two others suspected of having helped him in the scheme, José Raposo and Paulo Silva -, for whom the MP also requested suspended prison sentences.
In the case of Luís Filipe Vieira, president of Benfica between October 31, 2003 and July 15, 2021, Domingos Soares de Oliveira, who continued at the club after this date, Miguel Moreira and José Bernardes, Cláudia Caldas argued that the suspension of the sentences be conditioned on the payment to the State of the compensation required in the case, for missing taxes.
In total, the MP requested that these four defendants and the three companies be obliged to pay, jointly, 113,328 euros, plus late payment interest, related to the improper declaration of Value Added Tax (VAT) and Corporate Income Tax (IRC).
The acts under suspicion will have been carried out between 2016 and 2018.
w/ Lusa
