^SIRESP

The Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating strange business around the Portuguese state's Emergency and Security Communications network (SIRESP), according to Jornal de Notícias this Friday, January 17, 2025. The case has a nebulous history that begins in early 2022, when the socialist government launched an international public tender shrouded in suspicions of intending to benefit some to the detriment of others. The then president of SIRESP, Sandra Perdigão Neves, publicly stated that the government intended to benefit the company Motorola to the detriment of the company Altice that until then managed SIRESP. Neves claimed that the most valuable lot in the tender, worth 23 million euros, was an authentic "direct adjustment" to Motorola, because the government linked the state to the Tetra hardware that was exclusive to this company,

On March 22, 2022, the government removed Sandra Perdigão Neves from her position, for alleged links to Altice, whose owner is Patrick Drahi, a Portuguese citizen with Sephardic origins. Neves challenged her dismissal in court and on the 29th denounced that her house was robbed at night by professional thieves, who stole her computers. She had never been robbed before.

As the sole candidate for the most valuable item, Motorola won the tender. This was an immense gain, which extended over time. Subsequent purchases from the state had to be made from the same company, as no other company had that specific technology. If that was not enough, Jornal de Notícias has now reported that, in 2023 and 2024, the state paid 13 million euros to Motorola for equipment that had already been paid for with European funds under the international public tender held the previous year.

"Jews" appear by mistake in this mess...

Also in March 2022, the synagogue in Oporto was illegally invaded by prosecutors and police from Lisbon who were looking for documents about Patrick Drahi, waving anonymous complaints. The Community defined these steps as "a veritable armed robbery, totally illegal in a civilized society". In addition, it declared that it did not know the multimillionaire nor did it understand how his strong connections to the Sephardic community of Portuguese origin could be called into question.

The astonishment at the headquarters of the Community worsened when, two weeks later, it was reported that Sandra Perdigão Neves' house had been robbed to steal her computers. Weeks earlier, another robbery carried out by professional thieves had taken place, to steal the server, in the office of one of the Community's lawyers (case no. 35/22.2PJPRT), which was later visited by Lisbon policemen who showed her a list of "suspicious" rich Jews, with the name of Patrick Drahi in the first place. The lawyer did not know anyone on that list.

The Jewish Community of Oporto soon filed a complaint with the European Public Prosecutor's Office for suspected corruption in the SIRESP public tender, which was embodied in criminal case no. 24/22.7TPEUR and which gave rise to police searches in October of the same year.

A criminal association

Feeling persecuted and surrounded by agents of all the major powers of Portuguese society, from the executive, legislative, judicial branches and the political press, the Community promoted an international investigation against a "criminal association of a political nature", to gather evidence against it. According to the Community, to bring down the strongest Jewish community, the wealthy Jews and a law, the criminal group used all means, including robbers, saboteurs who attempted to kill a young Frenchman (case no. 2042/22.6PIPRT) and slanderous anonymous denunciations written by a convicted and troubled individual.

The use of those anonymous complaints, which had previously been rejected by the Oporto prosecutor's office (2017) and the Oporto police (2021), was such that a political newspaper published 40 news items against the Community without even listening to it. Meanwhile, the economic group that owns that newspaper also won two contracts in the international public tender (the one relating to transmission on terrestrial circuits and the one relating to the redundancy of satellite transmission) worth around 15 million euros.

Interconnected cases

The cases of SIRESP, the dismissal of its former president, the forced changes to the Sephardic law, the game of anonymous slanderous denunciations, the action of the political press against the Community, nd the government’s request to the Lisbon prosecutor's office to investigate the Jews of Oporto are interconnected by the facts exposed, by the names and actions of some socialist politicians, namely Constança Urbano de Sousa and Francisca Van Dunem, but also by other reasons that have not yet been made public.

What is certain is that the cases mentioned above aroused the passionate involvement of Lisbon's elites. Meanwhile, the Jewish Community of Oporto claims compensation of 10 million euros from the state for having seen its central synagogue, the Jewish Museum, and the homes of its leading families illegally invaded. The organization states that the investigators could have learned from the Community what independence from the powerful is, instead of now having to return the proceeds of the theft and apologize.