A former Portuguese prime minister has been indicted on graft and money laundering charges as part of a vast corruption investigation.

Jose Socrates has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has dismissed charges contained in a more than 4,000-page indictment as politically motivated.

Issued after a four-year inquiry, it accuses Mr Socrates of receiving millions of euros in a scheme involving the disgraced former heads of Espirito Santo bank and Portugal Telecom.

Both companies no longer exist, leaving billions of euros in losses to taxpayers and shareholders.

Their former managers have been accused of other crimes in separate investigations.


Mr Socrates, prime minister from 2005 to 2011, is charged with three counts of passive corruption while holding political office, 16 counts of money laundering, nine counts of forging documents and three counts of tax fraud. Those alleged offences were committed between 2006 and 2015.

Image: Banco Espiritu Santo collapsed in 2014

Joao Araujo, a lawyer for Mr Socrates, said he would fight the charges.

He said: "The 4,000 pages are part of a spectacle, they only serve to make believe that there is something, when there is nothing."

A date for the trial has not yet been set.

Prosecutors claim Mr Socrates gave illicit commercial benefits to construction company LENA in return for payments into a Swiss bank account.

A former manager at state-owned Caixa Geral de Depositos has also been charged with facilitating payments.

Ricardo Salgado, former chief executive of Banco Espirito Santo (BES), is charged with paying Mr Socrates to influence Portugal Telecom.

Salgado is also accused of paying Portugal Telecom's former chief executive Zeinal Bava and chairman Henrique Granadeiro. All three have denied wrongdoing.

BES, which was a major shareholder in Portugal Telecom, collapsed in 2014, causing a default of nearly €1bn at the telecommunications firm, which has now been sold off.

A total of 19 people and nine companies have been indicted following the inquiry.

Mr Socrates resigned as prime minister in 2011 after Portugal's debt crisis forced him to request an international bailout, which imposed stringent austerity measures on the country.

He was arrested in 2014 and spent months in prison before being moved to house arrest.