Altice. Release of Pereira with a bail of 1.5 million.

The Lisbon Court of Appeal has concluded that the facts gathered by the Justice Department during the investigation of the Picoas operation involving former Altice executives constitute very strong evidence of their involvement in active crimes of private sector corruption, qualified tax fraud, money laundering and falsification of documents that caused 660 million euros worth of damage to the telecommunications group.

In the November 28 ruling on the appeal of Hernani Vaz Antunes - brother of Altice shareholder and founder Armando Pereira - the trial judges decided to cancel the previously ordered domestic arrest and set this defendant's bail at 1.5 million euros due to flight risk, recommending that his eavesdropping and surveillance continue. In addition, Vaz Antunesh is still without a passport, prohibited from leaving the country and directly communicating with all the defendants, citizens and companies named in the order from the Department of Justice that prompted Operation Altice in July. "The decision of the challenged decision is legally sound when a judgment is made that Armando Pereiro's samma (provision of real estate, use of credit card and work in his house) as well as benefits to third parties, his relatives, would constitute a counter favor for activities beneficial to the interests of the challenger. "

It is stated in the judgment, "Let's be honest, nothing in this world, especially in the business world, is free.

[...] When it comes to visible 'charity', the giver is looking for a benefit that will repay his initiative in the future." And concludes: "When the transfer of services is clouded by less transparent transactions, including the interference of third parties, people or companies, the circulation of money, the creation of only visible businesses to justify payments, we begin to swim in the waters of apparent misconduct that actors wish to hide, knowing the wrongfulness of their behavior. In addition, it is suspected that the accused encouraged the granting of benefits in exchange for facilitating transactions for other Altice and Cisco employees such as Luis Alveirinho, Alexandre Fonseca, Yossef Benchtrit, Akeem Boubazin, Olivier Sansane and Olivier Duquesne, clearly identified in the reference, so we must recognize that the commission of this crime of corruption in the private sector is now sufficiently questionable".

In relation to the embezzlement of money committed by the defendants in Altice, the appeals court praises the work of the tax office, which made it possible to "calculate the amount of illegal benefits based on the company tax returns" of defendant Hernani Vaz Antunes. The minimum amount is calculated based on the difference between the tax rate in Madeira's Fritz zone and that applicable in the rest of the country and amounts to 110 million euros. "This is an objective calculation based on objective data without the use of indirect methods available to the tax authorities," said the ruling, provided to Nascer do SOL.