Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

The Presidency of the Republic provides the following clarification:

1. During the electoral campaign for the Presidency of the Republic, certain information was placed forward and comments made on the financial and patrimonial management of the departments of this sovereign body that have no basis whatsoever and are entirely untrue.

2. The Presidency of the Republic decided that it should not, at the time, provide any clarification on the issues put forward, since it considered as not opportune during the electoral campaign.

3. In these terms, it should be recalled that a Financial Audit was recently carried out to the Presidency of the Republic by the Auditors General’s Office. Resulting from this Audit, the Auditor General’s Office issued a Report with a favourable view on the accounts of this sovereign body for the year ended 31 December 2014 – the year on which the Audit was carried out – and considered that «the global reckoning was that the internal control system presents a “Good” degree of effectiveness in the prevention and detection of errors and irregularities, as proven by the situations previously listed and the measures adopted».

4. Since this was the first time that, in the history of the Presidency of the Republic, the support services of the Head of State were audited by the Auditor General’s Office, the Report of this body was opportunely disclosed in the Presidency of the Republic’s official site on the Internet, as a matter to be transparently placed before the Portuguese.

5. Contrary to what was recently put forward, the Presidency of the Republic always resorts to the legally foreseen procedures. Considering the nature and the size of the expenditure it either uses the system of direct settlement or public tender.
In effect, larger sized initiatives – such as the refurbishment of the Cidadela Palace, in Cascais, or of the Waterfall Gardens, in the Palace of Belém – were contracted following public tenders, always in strict compliance with the Law.

6. As such – and for public opinion, citizens and media to be fully clarified -, the Presidency of the Republic decided to again recall the publication of the Report resulting from the Financial Audit carried out by the Office of the Auditor General to its accounts, a document which may be fully viewed in the Internet address https://anibalcavacosilva.arquivo.presidencia.pt/archive/doc/Relatorio-Auditoria-PR-2014.pdf (portuguese), whose recommendations are being complied with within the terms referred in that same Report.