Belém Military Hospital? There was no “additional expenditure request”

“[The intervention] was on the side of the Directorate-General for National Defense Resources [DGRDN], which then made no further requests for expenditure”, said, as a witness, the then Minister of National Defense, in the trial of the Perfect Storm process in Lisbon.

The intervention in 2020 at the former Military Hospital in Belém, Lisbon, so that the space would urgently welcome patients of covid-19 is one of the undertakings under suspicion in the process, in which 73 defendants, including the former director-general of National Defense Resources Alberto Coelho and several entrepreneurs, account for corruption and other economic-financial crimes.

Initially budgeted at up to 750,000 euros, the reactivation work of the old health unit, deactivated in 2011, ended up costing almost 3.2 million euros with VAT.

According to João Gomes Cravinho, the identification of a maximum amount of 750 thousand euros left DGRDN in mid-March 2020 and did not include the provision of space with beds and other equipment.

At the end of that month, he added, a “service information”, pointed out, in a “very general” way, to an additional expenditure of EUR 400,000, of which he discarded 200,000, referring to the installation of hyperbaric chambers, which were not necessary to operationalize the hospital.

“ On the other EUR 200 thousand, he wanted more information and expected a request for the execution of this expenditure, which did not happen,” the former governor said, stressing that they were “amounts within the same expenditure scope” and not “a large over-budget, as then happened”.

Asked about an information from DGRDN dated April following that it is mentioned that the cost of additional work would amount to one million euros, João Gomes Cravinho assured that it only came to his knowledge in June 2020, already after the work was completed and inaugurated.

According to the former Minister of Defense, the document was referred by DGRDN to the chief of staff of the then Secretary of State for Human Resources and Former Combatants, Catarina Sarmento and Castro, without competence in the matter, and not to the Secretary of State for National Defense, Jorge Seguro Sanches.

The trial continues on Tuesday with the inquiry of the last witnesses indicated by the Public Prosecutor, succeeding in the following sessions of defense.

According to the charge, dated August 2023, at the center of the case are procedures for public procurement of services and contracts in which DGRDN appears, between 2018 and 2021, as a contractor and which have been decided for the benefit of certain companies in exchange for financial and asset counterparts, including cars and private works.

The trial takes place since June 9, 2026 at the Central Criminal Court in Lisbon and, in the first session, Alberto Coelho chose to refer to silence, leaving his defense open the possibility of the former director general making statements at the end of the production of proof, which will last at least until the end of November.