Ricardo Salgado: Supreme Court confirms eight-year prison sentence, but admits that former banker will not go to prison

Counselor Agostinho Torres may have found the solution for justice to resolve the Ricardo Salgado problem: he maintained the eight-year prison sentence to which the banker was sentenced in Operation Marquês, but admits that the sentence will be suspended upon its execution if a new expert confirm that the defendant has a psychological anomaly that prevents him from understanding “the purpose of the sentence”.

According to the ruling, revealed by Eco, the examination will have to be carried out before Salgado begins serving his sentence, thus preventing the banker from actually going to prison. This is in case the expert confirms that Salgado suffers from Alzheimer’s and does not have “the capacity to understand (…) the meaning and purpose of the sentence”.

Salgado has already been subject to two independent medical examinations as part of a civil case at the Cascais Court and in the EDP case. Both confirmed that he suffers from Alzheimer’s, but they also concluded that he could give statements in court.

This new skill will have to answer the question: Can Salgado be arrested? In other words, it will be the doctors who decide whether the banker will serve the sentence he was sentenced to in prison.

When he was sentenced in the first instance, the court admitted that Salgado had Alzheimer’s, but understood that this did not affect his ability to defend himself and referred the issue of the execution of the sentence due to a mental anomaly to the Sentence Execution Court. This understanding was confirmed by the Court of Appeal, which increased the sentence to eight years.

Now, the STJ understands that it should not “be” concluded from the text of the rule that the competence to suspend the execution of the sentence should be assessed only or necessarily only by the court executing the sentences, but, rather, nothing prevents (…) that its assessment is or can be carried out as soon as it is possible and justified, which may occur well before the execution of the sentence begins.

Salgado was convicted of breach of trust in one of the processes that resulted from the Operation Marquês instructional decision. As this decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal, the former banker was again charged with more crimes, including corruption. In the EDP case, he was also accused of this crime.