The Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, resigned this Tuesday to everyone's surprise. Surprise at being allegedly involved in a corruption case and surprise at having resigned immediately. The investigation against him and some members of his Cabinet is for alleged corruption, prevarication and influence peddling.

“I was surprised today that a criminal case has already been instituted against me, obviously I am fully available to collaborate with Justice in everything I deem necessary to establish the whole truth, whatever the matter may be,” Costa said before announcing who had submitted his resignation to the President of the Portuguese Republic.

Where the police searched

The prime minister resigned after investigators from the Attorney General's Office (PGR) searched his official residence as part of an investigation into an alleged corruption case.. They also searched 17 other homes and 25 premises, including the office of Costa's chief of staff and two ministries.

The researchers also traveled to the municipal offices of Sines, the port where investments in green hydrogen are focused.. The headquarters of the Lusorecursos company in Braga was also one of the targets of the raids.

How many detainees are there?

Five people were arrested by the police. They are the prime minister's chief of staff, Vítor Escária; a close advisor to Costa and one of his best friends, Diogo Lacerda Machado; the mayor of Sines, the socialist Nuno Mascarenhas and two of the administrators in the Start Campus company.

In addition, other members of the Cabinet would be being investigated as defendants, such as the Minister of the Environment, Duarto Cordeiro, and the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba, as well as the former Minister of the Environment João Pedro Matos Fernandes.

Why have they been detained?

Crimes of corruption and prevarication are being investigated for several concessions for lithium exploration and the construction of a hydrogen energy production plant, in addition to the construction of a gigantic digital data storage center in Sines, the Start Campus.

According to the Portuguese authorities, the arrest requests were made because there was, in their opinion, a risk of flight, as well as a risk of continuing criminal activity, disturbing the investigation and disturbing public order and tranquility.

What are the suspicious businesses

Lawyer Diogo Lacerda Machado is suspected of having “bought” Costa's chief of staff, Vítor Escária, Publico reports this Wednesday. He would have done it with the aim of obtaining the Government's favor for the Start Campus megaproject in Sines.

The Prosecutor's Office is investigating facts related to lithium exploration concessions in the Romano (Montalegre) and Barroso (Boticas) mines, a hydrogen energy production plant project in Sines and the construction project of a data center developed in the Industrial and Logistics Zone of Sines by the company Start Campus.

The Montalegre mine

In this town located a few kilometers from Spanish soil, the company Lusorecursos plans to exploit a lithium mine. The concession was signed in March 2019 and included a refinery to process raw ore at the Mina do Romano. Lusorecursos Portugal Lithium was established three days before the signing of the contract. It is managed by Ricardo Pinheiro, a person accused of economic crimes in an investigation into fraud with EU funds.

That same year, faced with a lawsuit filed against the Ministry of the Environment in order to annul the contract, the then Secretary of State for Energy, João Galamba, defended the green light given to the exploitation.. After the failure of Lusorecursos' first environmental impact study, presented in 2021, there was a second attempt. In September 2023, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) made a favorable statement: “The assessment carried out took into account the strategic interest of lithium to achieve the objectives of carbon neutrality and energy transition.”

The Boticas mine

The concession for the exploitation of lithium in the Barroso mine, in Boticas, is owned by Savannah Resources Plc, a company based in London.. The region, where the largest lithium reserves in Europe are located, has received the World Agricultural Heritage seal from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The project was met with strong local opposition, as the Savannah project wants to explore for lithium just a few hundred meters from the village of Covas do Barroso.. The first environmental impact study was rejected by the APA in June 2022, but finally in May 2023 it gave the green light to the expansion of the Barroso mine. The president of the APA acknowledged in a recent interview that lithium extraction could jeopardize the FAO label.

Sines' green hydrogen

H2Sines, the project to create a national consortium for the production of green hydrogen, has been one of the catalysts for the research, but it never materialized.. It began as an agreement between several companies, such as EDP, Galp, REN, Martifer and Vestas, to evaluate large-scale production of green hydrogen in Sines.

The objective was to develop a hydrogen production capacity of one gigawatt through the electrolysis of water using solar energy.. The company, Publico points out, turned out to be too ambitious and economically unviable.. The companies did not make progress in their realization. EDP withdrew in June 2021 and then Galp announced other priorities.

Mega data center in Sines

The so-called Sines 4.0 project involved an investment of up to 3.5 billion euros in a Hyperscaler data center campus, with a capacity of up to 450 megawatts. According to the development company, it would create “up to 1,200 highly qualified direct jobs and could generate 8,000 new indirect jobs until 2025”. In April 2021, with the presence of António Costa, the megaproject developed by the company Start Campus was presented.

Two of the five arrested are executives of this company. They are Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, a lawyer who for years was responsible for regulation at Galp. At the end of this September, the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba and the mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, visited the company on the occasion of the start of its activity.