Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa resigns after his chief of staff is arrested amid corruption probe

• Portuguese police arrested the Prime Minister’s chief of staff earlier today
• Prosecutors are probing allegations of corruption related to energy contracts

Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa today announced he is resigning after being involved in a widespread corruption probe into energy contracts.

Costa said in a nationally televised address that ‘in these circumstances, obviously, I have presented my resignation to the president of the republic.’ 

Portuguese police arrested Vítor Escária – the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff – hours before Costa’s statement while raiding several public buildings and other properties as part of their probe, the prosecutor’s office said.

The Supreme Court is also examining the suspects’ ‘use of the prime minister’s name and his involvement to unlock’ the practices being probed.

An investigative judge issued arrest warrants for Costa’s chief of staff, the mayor of Sines, and three other people because they represented a flight risk and to protect evidence, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

It said that the Minister of Infrastructure João Galamba and the head of the country’s environmental agency were among those named as suspects.

Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa said Tuesday he is resigning after being involved in a widespread corruption probe into energy contracts

The judge is investigating alleged malfeasance, corruption of elected officials, and influence peddling related to lithium mine concessions near Portugal’s northern border with Spain, as well as plans for a green hydrogen plant and data centre in the southern coastal town of Sines.

The raids included the premises of the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Sines town council, private homes and offices.

The prosecutor’s office said that the probe has determined that the ‘suspects invoked the name of the prime minister’ when carrying out their allegedly illicit activities, and that investigators would look into the Prime Minister’s role in the deals. 

Costa, a Socialist, has been in power since 2015.

Portuguese press work outside the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s official residency at Sao Bento Palace in Lisbon on November 7, 2023

Portugal’s lithium mines and green hydrogen projects are part of the continent’s green initiative being pushed by the European Union.

‘The prime minister must resign… the country is mired in corruption, rot, nepotism. The PM has dragged the country into a quagmire,’ said Rui Rocha, president of Portugal’s Iniciativa Liberal party.

Costa met with President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Tuesday morning to provide explanations and was meeting him again in the afternoon, Portugal’s SIC broadcaster said. 

Costa and the president’s offices did not comment on the meetings.

Now, Rebelo de Sousa must choose to either dissolve Portugal’s parliament and hold new elections, or appoint a new Prime Minister directly. 

Costa will remain as a caretaker leader until one of those options is fulfilled. 

But he confirmed he had no intention of running for office again.

‘I’m not going to run again to be prime minister,’ Costa said. ‘It is a stage of my life that is finished.’

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