Vieira, Benfica and all in ‘Saco Azul’ cleared: “No IT test after 10 years” | 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 know who did what, who accessed the system, and what IT issues were created. And now it was impossible, at this stage of the trial, to do that, 10 years later,” said the judge at the Lisbon court.

For the court, there are still doubts about 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, purely and simply, with the hat worn by defendant José Bernardes in carrying out that 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 do 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’m] very pleased. It has been ten years of a process that ends today. It is a result we expected and hoped for. (…) Ten years is a very 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 suffered 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 siphon 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’s indictment and after all the evidence examined at trial, the court found that “it is not possible, at this remove, 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.