Minister’s brother-in-law becomes official suspect – Portugal Resident

Operation Control Tower, the PJ police investigation into a suspected cartel renting firefighting helicopters to the Portuguese state during the ‘wildfire season’, has now amassed 16 ‘official suspects’, including the brother-in-law of Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro.

In spite of having held a position within one of his brother-in-law’s helicopter companies (as director of operations), Leitão Amaro reacted strongly yesterday to the connections media articles drew in this story. His office even went to the lengths of stating that it is “inadmissible to involve or blame anyone for family ties”. 

For this reason, the ‘associations of image and name of the minister in news articles of an investigation in which he has no involvement’ were dubbed “calumnious”.

To be fair, not one article appears to have said anything ‘calumnious’ – and today, the dust is settling and investigations are no doubt continuing at their normal pace.

Yesterday’s searches of several homes and business premises highlighted Leitão Machado’s involvement essentially because he is the minister’s brother-in-law, and because he is also sought with regard to a legal dispute with the Angolan government (in which Angola is accusing him of fraud).

According to RTP, the searches were ‘phase two’ of Operation Control Tower; phase one having centred on PJ searches within the Air Force and “other companies. At the time seven people and five companies were made official suspects.

Expresso writes today that the PJ and Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed this week more details “which seem to confirm initial suspicions: ‘At issue are facts that suggest illegal practices related to the contracting of aerial firefighting resources in rural areas, with suspicions that the managers of the competing companies, after gaining access to privileged information, pre-arranged the bids to be submitted in the tenders, thus harming the State’s financial interests.”

These interests were given yesterday at around €100 million.

But what is still unclear is exactly how the managers of the ‘competing companies’ came to “gain access to privileged information”.

Source material: Expresso/ RTP