‘Golden visa’ scandal | Portugal Minister steps down as friends caught in corruption net

Minister Miguel Macedo announcing his resignation

The Portuguese minister of internal affairs, Miguel Macedo, has announced he is to resign in the wake of a scandal involving so-called “golden visas” saying his “authority was diminished”, even though he had no hand in the process.
“I have no intervention in the administrative process of attributing visas and personally, nothing to do with the investigations, as the Attorney General said in a communiqué”, Macedo stated in a declaration read at his ministry yesterday (Macau time).
Several people close to Miguel Macedo, such as the president of the institute of registries and notaries, António Figueiredo, and the national director of the border authorities, Manuel Palos, are being investigated as part of ‘Operation labyrinth’ which is focusing on alleged corruption in attributing ‘golden visas.’
Meanwhile, some of the most senior figures in the Portuguese bureaucracy, including Manuel Jarmela Palos and António Figueiredo, spent the weekend being interrogated on charges of corruption and money laundering.
A statement from the Attorney General’s Office on Friday confirmed that a total of eleven people had been arrested and face charges in relation to the issuing of “golden visas” with Maria Antónia Anes, Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice, also included in that number.
The authorities spent Thursday making a total of sixty raids reaching across much of the Portuguese state bureaucracy with focal points featuring the Ministries of Internal Affairs, Justice and the Environment, Planning and Energy.
“These raids related to the collection of information related to those departments, services and employees of those ministries and did not target any member of the government,” the Attorney General’s statement read.
The eleven are expected to face a number of charges ranging from fraud and dereliction of duty through to corruption and money laundering.
The “golden visa” program was launched in 2013 and fast tracks the visa process for citizens living outside of the Schengen space that invest a certain amount in Portugal for a period of no less than five years.
Thus far, the two years of the program have seen a total of 1,649 visas awarded, the majority to Chinese citizens, and attracting in excess of €1 billion (USD1.25 billion) in investment, primarily going into the property market. Lusa