Friday, May 8th, Vila Nova de Gaia Court. The Portuguese-Israeli citizen Elad Dror was ordered to pay the State €3,133,172.16. His company Fortera was also ordered to pay €8,582,394.03, totaling €11,715,566.19 in compensation.

The outcome of this case is unknown. The appeals court will rule on the now announced 2,500-page sentence in the coming months. For now, two very different perspectives are known.

The first perspective is that of the Court, which accepted as proven everything the prosecution argued, namely, that the Portuguese-Israeli businessman was favored in real estate projects he wished to undertake in Vila Nova de Gaia, and that this favoritism occurred because he bribed the vice-president of the municipality with €1,000 for a Christmas watch and with payments for services by a developer and a lawyer, who, according to the prosecution, had a criminal scheme with the vice-president of the municipality.

The second perspective is that of criminal lawyer João Peres, who argues that the businessman was invited by the municipality to undertake projects that no one else wanted to do. Peres claims that the municipality made life difficult for the businessman, never favoring him in any way. "In the end, the State judged him in a court that did not even admit documentary evidence proving that the businessman was disadvantaged, instead of being favored." Peres has no doubt his customer must be acquitted on appeal.

The president of the Jewish Community of Porto, Gabriel Senderowicz, asked the aforementioned lawyer to send him – for the organization's records – all the details of the case. "I don't understand anything about real estate," Senderowicz said, "nor do I understand how projects are usually negotiated with municipalities. I also don't know the facts that were judged, nor the sentence handed down yesterday by the court, and even less do I know what the appeals court will say. But there are things I want clarified, both regarding the facts judged and the context of the case."

The president analyzes both perspectives of the case. "Let's suppose a businessman arrives in Portugal and enriches a vice-president of a municipality to make decisions that harm society. Certainly, I would be the first to condemn these facts. But let's now analyze the perspective conveyed by the businessman and his defender. Let's suppose what they say is true. So, the case changes shape and must have consequences."

Something much more sensitive is revealed by the president. "I believe that in Portugal people used to find normal everything that in a civilized society would be considered totally abnormal. For instance, I recall that in January 2023, LUSA falsely reported that the owner of Fortera had been arrested, and worse, the fake news was based on an anonymous socialist source. The detention occurred, yes, but four months later in a completely different case. Worst, with a photo of the synagogue, it was reported in the system's newspapers that the businessman was a Sephardic Jew certified by the Jewish community of Porto, which is actually true, he was indeed certified by us, and rightfully so. I also recall that, in Jan 2024, a demonstration against businessmen described as "murderous Zionists," "neither Haifa nor Boavista," gave rise to news in a system newspaper that identified this businessman and all the others in the community I preside over as being responsible for the housing crisis. The system can find all this normal. I really don't."

The Community Archives

The leadership of the Jewish Community of Porto has already requested from Peres the recently handed-down sentence to deposit in the synagogue archives. Senderowicz explains why. "Frankly, I'm fed up with seeing prosecutors, judges, and police officers entangled with the press, anonymous sources, socialists, etc. Okay, the political and media system doesn't want Jews, Israelis, or Jewish success. We have archives full of evidence on this subject. The annihilation of the Fortera company is only another case of many. And so, yes, our archives should very carefully record everything related to this strange case. The state that now wants 12 million euros in compensation is the same one that dared to say – in another court – that it doesn't need signals of a crime to invade and trample a synagogue. Very well, let's keep official record of these facts. One day we'll talk about all this. I think the system still hasn't understood that a Jew lives the present, the past and the future in the same life."