Lisbon Court Sends Sócrates-Era Public Works Secretary Paulo Campos to Trial Over the €1 Billion Road-PPP Case — Judge Carlos Alexandre Pronounces Five of Ten Charges as Costa Pina Walks Free Thirteen Years On

Thirteen years after investigators first opened the file, a Lisbon court has decided that the long-running corruption case over Portugal's road public-private partnerships will finally be heard at trial. On Monday 22 June 2026 the Tribunal Central de Instrução Criminal (Central Criminal Investigation Court) issued its despacho de pronúncia (committal order) sending Paulo Campos — Secretary of State for Public Works and Communications across the 2005–2011 governments of José Sócrates — to stand trial on charges of participação económica em negócio (economic participation in business).

The investigating judge, Carlos Alexandre, did not endorse the prosecution's full theory. Of the ten counts the Ministério Público (Public Prosecution Service) had levelled at Campos in its 2021 indictment, the judge pronounced him on five and acquitted him of the rest at this stage. A second former government figure, Carlos Costa Pina — Secretary of State for the Treasury and Finance over the same period — was cleared of all five counts against him and will not be tried. A third defendant, Rui Manteigas, a former administrator of the state road company Estradas de Portugal, was also committed for trial.

What the case is about

Prosecutors allege that a cluster of decisions on Portugal's motorway concessions between 2009 and 2011 were steered in ways that favoured the private concessionaires at the State's expense, with the total damage to the public purse estimated at around one billion euros. The contested decisions span three connected strands:

• The SCUT conversions. The renegotiation of several former Sem Custos para o Utilizador (toll-free, state-paid) motorways — Costa de Prata, Grande Porto, Beira Litoral e Alta — as the country shifted those roads onto user tolls.
• The 2010 toll renegotiations. Changes to already-tolled concessions in the Norte and Grande Lisboa networks.
• The 2009–2010 sub-concessions. A wave of new sub-concession contracts covering Algarve Litoral, Transmontana, Douro Interior, Baixo Alentejo and Litoral Oeste.

A file that took thirteen years

The investigation has moved at the glacial pace that has come to define Portugal's biggest white-collar cases. The Public Prosecution Service brought its accusation in 2021, roughly eight years after the inquiry began, and the case has spent the years since in the instrução phase, where a judge tests whether the charges are strong enough to go to trial. In December 2021 part of the inquiry was archived: three former ministers from the same era — Mário Lino, António Mendonça and Fernando Teixeira dos Santos — saw the charges against them dropped. Monday's order is the point at which the surviving accusations clear that filter and head to a full hearing.

Campos has consistently rejected the allegations. No trial date has yet been set, and a committal order is not a conviction: it simply means a court has found enough to proceed. Under Portuguese law the defendants retain the full presumption of innocence until a judgment is delivered, and the pronúncia can still be appealed.

Why it lands now

The timing is pointed. Only last week the Unidade Técnica de Apoio Orçamental (Technical Budget Support Unit, or UTAO) put a number on the live fiscal exposure that the same family of contracts still carries, flagging more than €1.3 billion in public-private-partnership risk to the State, with motorway concessions accounting for the overwhelming majority of the bill. The PPP model that powered Portugal's motorway build-out in the 2000s has become a recurring line item in every audit of the public finances — and a recurring test of how the courts hold former office-holders to account.

It also arrives against a backdrop of high-profile financial-crime cases grinding through the system at very different speeds, from the stalled sentencing in the Operação Marquês and EDP cases to the appeal-court acquittal of Isabel dos Santos in the Efacec financing case. The pattern that critics keep returning to is duration: cases that take a decade or more to reach a courtroom test public confidence as much as any single verdict.

What this means for expats

• It is a window into how Portuguese justice actually moves. If you are settling here, the headline lesson is pace: serious cases routinely run for ten to fifteen years between investigation and trial. That matters for anyone weighing the reliability of contracts, disputes or enforcement in Portugal.
• The PPP bill is your bill too. The motorway concessions at the heart of this case are still generating contingent liabilities that show up in the national accounts. Those obligations compete with the spending — on health, transport and housing — that shapes day-to-day life for residents.
• Accountability is real but slow. A former secretary of state being committed for trial shows the system does pursue senior figures. The flip side — partial acquittals and dropped charges after years of inquiry — is a reminder of how much erodes along the way.
• Watch the road network, not just the courtroom. Renegotiations of these same concessions periodically feed into tolls, and the structure of Portugal's motorway charging is a practical cost for residents who drive. Decisions taken to manage the PPP legacy can land directly on the windscreen-mounted Via Verde account.

With the committal order issued, the next milestones are an eventual trial date and any appeals of the pronúncia itself. Either way, a case that began when Portugal was still under the troika's bailout watch is now, finally, headed for open court.