Luis Neves is getting a parliamentary inquiry into his years running the PJ, and he says bring it on
Chega is forcing a parliamentary inquiry into Luis Neves' terms as national director of Portugal's Judicial Police, set for September. Iniciativa Liberal wants the interior minister questioned sooner.
The story about the interior minister’s home renovations just changed size. This is no longer a row about invoices and a trailer: Chega leader André Ventura announced on Friday that his party is going ahead with a parliamentary inquiry into Luis Neves’ time as national director of the Judicial Police. The minister, who has spent weeks insisting he is perfectly calm, answered with two words: good, finally.
What is a Portuguese parliamentary inquiry?
It is the heaviest instrument parliament has for investigating on its own. An inquiry commission hears witnesses under oath, demands documents from public bodies and issues a report with political conclusions — it convicts nobody, but it forces everyone involved to sit down and explain themselves in public. And here is the detail that settles this one: a parliamentary group of sufficient size can force a commission into existence without needing anyone else’s votes, which takes away the majority’s power to block it.
When does the inquiry into Luis Neves begin?
September, once the parliamentary holidays end. The stated target is not only the works at the Odemira property but the whole period Neves spent leading the Judicial Police — the years when Construbarcelos, the firm that worked on the minister’s family estate, was also doing jobs for the police force he ran. Neves had already published 108 invoices for the renovation without producing proof of payment, and that loose end is what keeps feeding everything else.
Iniciativa Liberal does not want to wait for September and is preparing a request to bring the minister before the Standing Committee, the body that keeps working while the full chamber is on recess. The Socialists landed on the opposite side of the argument, accusing Chega of weakening the Judicial Police itself by putting its former leadership under a parliamentary inquiry. How these commissions operate is set out in the rules of procedure of the Assembly of the Republic.
And what does the minister say?
That he will speak “as soon as possible”, without naming a day. Neves says he is gathering the paperwork on the renovations and on the trailer seized in a drug-trafficking case that turned up hitched to a truck belonging to the building firm — the episode that led the Judicial Police to open an investigation and prosecutors to confirm a formal inquiry. Prime minister Luis Montenegro has declined to comment while the case runs.
The calendar is now out of everyone’s hands. September arrives, parliament comes back, and the minister will have to tell the whole story with a microphone in front of him.
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
