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Britain ‘probing corruption case against Portugal PM’

LISBON - Britain is probing allegations that Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates accepted bribes from a British building firm, prosecutors confirmed, while insisting they had no evidence against him.

In a statement the Portuguese prosecutor general’s office said it had received requests from British authorities on January 19, which the Lisbon press alleges specifically targeted Socrates.

The weekly Sabado said British investigators looking into the so-called Freeport scandal sought access to the prime minister’s bank accounts.

In 2002, Socrates - then the environment minister - gave the green light to the British Freeport group to build a 75,000 square-metre shopping complex in Alcochete, near Lisbon.

Socrates denied taking bribes to award the contract at a news conference on Saturday, charging that the allegations were resurfacing ahead of general elections due late this year.

An investigation was opened into the affair in 2004 - following an anonymous tip - and was relaunched by the public prosecutor in 2005, shortly before Socrates’ Socialist Party won legislative elections.

Thursday’s statement from the prosecutor, which did not mention the prime minister by name, said: “The alleged facts which the English police are relying on to investigate Portuguese citizens are those which were passed on to them in 2005 on the basis of an anonymous denunciation, in an early phase of the inquiry, containing hypotheses which have not been possible to confirm as yet, because of the absence of any concrete suspicion.”

“The English rogatory commission contains no juridically relevant fact to add to those which are already known and are the object of an inquiry on the part of the Portuguese authorities,” it added.

In addition, it “contains no ... element which might justify a change in the position” of the Portuguese prosecutors, the statement said.

“No one is above the law, but no Portuguese citizen can be charged, or even suspected, solely because the police of another country has launched an inquiry against him on the basis of unconfirmed hypotheses.”