The Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, said this Sunday that it is necessary to guarantee that wiretapping in Portugal “is carried out legally” and that “this is valid for all Portuguese people, whether they are prime ministers or not”.
However, Luís Montenegro warned that, in the case of wiretapping a prime minister, “added to all this is the circumstance” that he “deals with State matters”, in reaction to the fact that the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) recognized on Friday that seven wiretaps were identified in which former Prime Minister António Costa was involved and which were not communicated to the Supreme Court of Justice “for various technical reasons”.
“And, therefore, in addition to also having private conversations, in addition to being compressed in your freedom, if you are being listened to, in addition to being able to have your secrets, you also have the secret of the State that you share by virtue of the role you perform. And, therefore, we must have even more reinforced the conviction that legality is assured”, he stated in Luanda, as part of a visit to Angola, before the start of the European Union-African Union Summit.
“We must be absolutely certain, in Portugal, that the wiretaps carried out by the investigative authorities are wiretaps carried out within the law”, he argued, stressing that “this is valid for all Portuguese people, whether prime ministers or not”, and that a wiretap must be carried out in accordance with all the determinations and provisions contained in the law, because wiretap is an invasion of privacy, wiretap is, in some way, a compression of individual freedom, often even an invasion of a professional secret, a business secret of a particular person.”
On Friday, the PGR stated in a statement that, recently, “in the course of a new analysis of all wiretaps carried out” as part of Operation Influencer, seven interceptions were identified “in which Prime Minister António Costa was also involved, a fact that, for various technical reasons, had not been initially detected”.
On November 7, 2023, five people were detained and later released, as part of Operation Influencer, including Costa’s then chief of staff, Vítor Escária.
There are suspicions of crime in the construction of a data center in Sines, district of Setúbal, in the exploration of lithium in Montalegre and Boticas, both in the district of Vila Real, and in the production of energy from hydrogen, also in Sines.
The case led to the fall of the absolute majority government of the now President of the European Council.