"I didn't have any lunch, I didn't have any dinner, I didn't make any purchases, I never charged any expenses to the municipal services, neither then nor today", said António Silva Tiago (PSD/CDS-PP), during the meeting of the executive of that municipality in the district of Porto, which took place at the end of this afternoon. The mayor's statement was made in response to the leader of the socialist opposition, Francisco Vieira de Carvalho, who confronted Silva Tiago with the fact that the Matosinhos Criminal Investigation Court had indicted him (decided to bring him to trial), together with his predecessor, Bragança Fernandes, and four other defendants for the crime of embezzlement, for "misappropriation of money" from the municipal water and sanitation services, after the completion of the investigation phase. In October 2021, the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) brought charges against the six defendants, alleging that the criminal offenses occurred between 2013 and 2018, a period during which five of those involved held positions on the Board of Directors of SMEAS - Municipal Electricity, Water and Sanitation Services of the Maia Municipal Council and, at the same time, in the municipal executive. According to the mayor, "the managing director [of the municipal services] reports the expenses of that month monthly, whether it was 40 thousand euros, or 60 or 70". "The board of directors, and I as chairman of the board of directors, authorize payment orders because the administration is the one who has this competence in the banks. All this is processed by the services (...) these are imminently technical matters", he said. The mayor, who said he did not yet know the content of the indictment, denied any responsibility in the case: "I was told that I was a defendant because I had signed five payment orders for things that I have absolutely nothing to do with that expense". Silva Tiago also said he was pleased that "all this will be settled in court, and well". According to the indictment of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the former mayor of Maia, and current president of the Municipal Assembly, Bragança Fernandes, Hernâni Ribeiro, councilor in the current executive, former councilors Ana Vieira de Carvalho and Manuel Nogueira dos Santos, and Albertino da Silva, former managing director of SMEAS - Municipal Electricity, Water and Sanitation Services, submitted, between 2013 and 2018, 433 invoices for expenses with meals and purchase of computer equipment, totaling almost 53 thousand euros. "433 expenses with meals were authorized, 233 of which correspond to meals that took place on Fridays (predominantly dinners), weekends and holidays, in high-level or expensive restaurants, and invoking the payment of meals to entities that also received representation expenses", emphasizes the MP. "The members of the Board of Directors [of SMEAS], the defendants Bragança Fernandes, Hernâni Ribeiro, Ana Vieira de Carvalho, Nogueira dos Santos and Silva Tiago, who signed, individually or jointly, the respective 'payment order' had knowledge of its content, as well as had the power to confront the invoice and the goods described therein, as well as its justification, so it is under these conditions that they assume the authorization of its payment", says the MP. The indictment also points out flaws in the way the defendants managed SMEAS, "which involved the adoption of perfectly anodyne or non-existent control and 'compliance' procedures". "The defendants, in a combination of efforts and in execution of a plan orchestrated by all, by common agreement, allowed the members of the Board of Directors of SMEAS and its managing director to make their own amounts belonging to SMEAS, corresponding to meals that should have been borne by them", in the amount of almost 53 thousand euros, says the MP. Read Also: Maia. Former president and 4 defendants will have submitted 433 invoices in scheme (Portuguese version)