The Portuguese Police have arrested Emilio Vázquez Blanco, former Organization Secretary of the PSOE in A Coruña and former regional parliamentarian in Galicia, as part of an alleged corruption scheme involving a former advisor of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) and related to the awarding of irregular contracts in municipalities of the neighboring country.
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According to sources from the Portuguese media ‘Observador’ and confirmed to Europa Press by close sources, one of the four detainees in the corruption scheme is Vázquez Blanco, who has been living in Portugal for some years and has ties with the PS.
Vázquez Blanco, owner of a political marketing company called Cecubometrics, is accused of allegedly being an accomplice of Duarte Moral – former advisor to former Prime Minister António Costa and current advisor to the socialist secretary general, José Luís Carneiro – in the alleged manipulation of contracts.
Specifically, the mentioned media points out that Cecubometrics invoiced four monthly contracts of 24,600 euros each, between March and June 2019, when Duarte Moral was working for the PS as part of the campaign for the European Parliament elections.
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Possible fictitious contracts
According to a report prepared by the Entity of Accounts and Political Financing, these contracts do not include “fees, number of team members, number of hours, and respective unit value per hour.”
The Police executed, the day before, a total of 60 search warrants in homes and 32 in other municipalities of the Lisbon metropolitan area led by the socialists as part of an investigation for crimes ranging from malfeasance or document forgery to aggravated tax fraud.
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Emilio Vázquez Blanco entered the Parliament of Galicia as a regional deputy of the PSdeG in 2015 and during that period was Organization Secretary of the PSOE in A Coruña. In 2016 he moved to live in Portugal, leaving his participation in the forefront of Galician politics.
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