Lisbon Criminal Court Convenes Tempestade Perfeita Defence-Procurement Mega-Trial With 73 Arguidos on 9 June — 43 Individuals, 30 Companies and Three Former DGRDN Directors Run Through 25 November 2026

The Tribunal Central Criminal de Lisboa (Lisbon Central Criminal Court) opens the trial of the Operação Tempestade Perfeita (Operation Perfect Storm) defence-procurement corruption case on Tuesday, 9 June 2026. The docket carries 73 arguidos — 43 individuals and 30 companies — into a hearing schedule that, under the court order of 8 March, runs through 25 November 2026 with an interruption across the summer judicial recess. The opening session had been due on 3 June but slipped six working days after the general strike that day paralysed court staff and forced the Conselho Superior da Magistratura (CSM, Higher Council of the Judiciary) to reschedule.

What the Indictment Alleges

The Ministério Público's accusation, signed by the Departamento Central de Investigação e Ação Penal (DCIAP, Central Investigation and Criminal Action Department) in August 2023 and confirmed in February 2025 by the instruction judge nos exatos termos da acusação (in the exact terms of the accusation), centres on rigged public-works contracts run through the Direção-Geral de Recursos da Defesa Nacional (DGRDN, Directorate-General for National Defence Resources) — the body inside the Ministry of Defence that manages real estate, infrastructure and major capital programmes for the Armed Forces.

The charge sheet runs across four crime families:

• Active and passive corruption (corrupção ativa e passiva) for the alleged payment and acceptance of benefits to steer contract awards.
• Embezzlement (peculato) tied to the diversion of public resources.
• Money laundering (branqueamento de capitais) for the recycling of proceeds through layered corporate vehicles.
• Document falsification (falsificação de documentos) used to dress up the procurement paperwork.

Wiretaps, intercepted messages and seized accounting form the spine of the prosecution case. The Ministério Público has indicated it will rely heavily on the digital-forensics tape captured during the 2022–2023 investigative phase.

The Three Former DGRDN Directors in the Dock

The headline individual defendants are three former DGRDN leaders who ran the directorate during the period covered by the indictment:

• Alberto Coelho, former director-general — the lead defendant on the indictment.
• Paulo Morais Branco, former financial director.
• Francisco Marques, former director of Infrastructure and Heritage Services.

The remaining 40 individual defendants include sub-contractors, intermediaries and corporate officers. The 30 company defendants run from small specialist sub-contractors up to mid-sized civil-works integrators.

Why the 3 June Strike Pushed the Trial

The original opening date was 3 June 2026. The general strike called that day by Frente Comum and the CGTP-IN — directed at the labour-reform package and the public-sector salary tape — pulled court clerks and bailiffs off the building, and the CSM rescheduled the formal opening for 9 June to preserve the procedural integrity of the constitution-of-tribunal session. The six-day slip does not affect the court order's overall 25 November end-date.

Why This Trial Matters

Tempestade Perfeita is the largest defence-procurement corruption trial in Portugal in more than a decade, and the largest public-works corruption trial in the Lisbon Central Criminal docket since the Marquês case. It tests three things at once: the Ministério Público's ability to land convictions on a multi-defendant, multi-crime indictment of this scale; the Lisbon Central Criminal Court's docket throughput on mega-cases (six-month hearing schedule, dozens of co-defendants); and the political-administrative perimeter around defence-sector contracting, where Lisbon's NATO and Programa Capacitário spending has accelerated since 2024.

What This Means for Expats

• Lisbon residents: the trial sits inside the Campus de Justiça in Parque das Nações. Expect occasional press and security density on hearing days through to the summer recess and from September through November.
• Defence-sector workers and suppliers: the evidentiary record will surface contracting-process practices at DGRDN over the indictment period. Suppliers active in defence-infrastructure tenders should track findings for compliance read-across.
• Civic-trust observers: the verdict — likely no earlier than early 2027 once deliberations close — will be a structural data point on Portuguese judicial throughput on complex corruption cases, a recurring complaint in OECD and GRECO (Group of States Against Corruption) country reports.

The next public checkpoints are the constitution-of-tribunal formalities on 9 June and the first substantive witness sessions later in the week. Defence counsel for several arguidos have signalled they will challenge the use of intercepted communications and the chain-of-custody on the digital-forensics evidence; those preliminary motions are likely to dominate the opening weeks before the merits phase opens.