Today, the Jewish Community of Oporto advised the authorities to arrest “a group of individuals consisting of professional thieves, influence traffickers, corrupt people and convicted slanderers, which came together to produce, distribute and disseminate slanderous anonymous denunciations and carry out nocturnal attacks on private residences and law offices in order to collect miscellaneous information that could be linked to said denunciations".
The organisation adds that “Said criminal association was also linked to the attempt to silence the first signatories to a petition that 44 young French students addressed to Parliament, who by a whisker escaped a serious motor car accident caused by the tyre of their car being deliberately slashed”.
The communication the Community addressed to the judicial authorities in Lisbon, to which the Portuguese Jewish News had access, also says that “The criminal association attempted to destroy all significant Jewish realities in Portugal: the Jewish community that is by far the strongest in terms of religion and culture, the billionaire Jews who had requested Portuguese nationality and the very law of the Sephardim, which ended, in fact, by being destroyed in practice, through a regulation published a mere seven days after those inconceivable searches the Lisbon authorities decided to carry out with great clamour and publicity”.
The Community recalls that, “based exclusively on the alarming and turbulent action of the above-described criminal association, and undergoing extreme political pressure, the authorities persecuted a religious minority that has suffered for millennia, with searches carried out on its temple (its religion), its museums (its culture), its archives (its history), its homes (its family), its offices (its work) and so on."
The letter recalls the seven slanderous inventions whose numerical symbolism must result in consequences:
- "Relations between several companies, the Jewish Community of Oporto and its leaders, and the competent Portuguese authorities;
- Acquaintances and privileged connections in the Registry Offices, enabling them to have priority in the requests submitted requesting Portuguese nationality for Sephardic Jews.
- In exchange for cash compensation, the origin of the Sephardic Jews was falsely attested.
- In some cases, such as those of Roman Abramovich and Patrick Drahi, illegalities in the acquisition process are suspected.
- The company whose senior manager is married to the Vice-President, signs the certificates and has dramatically increased the cost of providing such services.
- Donations have been illegally channelled to certain members with positions within the community.
- A considerable part of the money is channelled into private pockets."
All this evidence is considered “an aberration” in the Community’s letter, which also refers to the scrutiny to which all these people and organisations are subject:
"Scrutiny is not to assassinate the only strong Jewish community in a country, based on inconceivable anonymous denunciations made by convicted persons and robbers.
Scrutiny is not to invade synagogues, museums and the homes of honest people without enough evidence in the light of the constitutional rights that govern the restriction of rights.
Scrutiny is not to trample forever on the reputation of a centenary Jewish institution and its most relevant families “based on nothing", in the words of the Court of Appeal."
The letter goes on to say:
"Scrutiny is not journalistic corruption to do political favours, nor the clamour of professional slanderers that Judaism equates to leprosy and who were expurgated by all the ethical traditions recorded by humanity.
Nor is Scrutiny a national propaganda scheme that has excluded all renowned journalists in matters of criminal investigation. Among them, and there are few, there was only one who lost time with the case, and destroyed the “theory” in minutes:
"There were thieves, corrupt people and influence traffickers but they were to be found on the other side of the barricade mixed up with slanderous and murderers who in any country worthy of respect would have to face a prison sentence", it was written by the Community.
The letter ends by saying that, "If the strongest Jewish community in Portugal was the target of a criminal scheme of that type, just imagine how many people without a voice have been victims of even worse persecutions, with slanderous anonymous denunciations, attacks on property, civic assassinations, attempted murder and more”.
