Vieira, Benfica, all cleared in ‘Saco Azul’: “10 years on, no IT tests” | OneFootball

All the defendants in the ‘Blue Bag’ case, including former Benfica president Luís Filipe Vieira, were acquitted this Thursday, April 23, with the court noting reservations about the prosecution’s case.

“Only through a forensic technical examination could we find out who did what, who accessed the system, and what IT issues were created. And now, at this stage of the trial, that was impossible to do, 10 years later,” said the judge at the Lisbon court.

For the court, doubts remain as to what businessman José Bernardes may have done at the company Questãoflexível, which he owned, since the Public Prosecutor’s Office argued in the indictment that there were allegedly sham contracts entered into between Questãoflexível and Benfica Estádio, paid for by the latter and by Benfica SAD.

“The issue has to do solely and exclusively with the role used by defendant José Bernardes to carry out this work for Benfica. That is the big question,” the judge explained, adding that “there are arguments to support that José Bernardes may have worked at [the company] Questãoflexível to carry out work for Benfica, but there are also arguments against it.”

Besides Luís Filipe Vieira, who was Benfica president between October 31, 2003 and July 15, 2021, the remaining defendants were also acquitted: former Benfica chief executive officer (CEO) Domingos Soares de Oliveira, the club’s former financial director Miguel Moreira, Questãoflexível owner José Bernardes, the other two suspects accused of helping him in the scheme, José Raposo and Paulo Silva, as well as Benfica SAD and Benfica Estádio.

“[I am] very pleased. It has been ten years of proceedings that end today. It is a result we expected and hoped for. (…) Ten years is a long time in every respect. And in sport it involves much more than public image, it also affects all sporting areas”, said the club’s current president, Rui Costa, who called it a “victory for Benfica,” but stressed that “everything Benfica has been harmed by over the last ten years” should not be “erased.” “Justice has been done and Benfica’s name has been cleared”, he added.

The crimes at issue are linked to an alleged scheme, between 2015 and 2018, set up by the defendants to extract more than 1.8 million euros from Benfica through fictitious IT consultancy contracts, much of which allegedly later returned to the club in cash.

Given the Public Prosecutor’s Office indictment and after all the evidence examined at trial, the court found that “it is not possible, at this distance in time, by comparing versions of documents, with the vagueness they contain,” to reach a conclusion free of doubt.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.