Joana Marques Vidal

Maria Joana Raposo Marques Vidal , mostly Joana Marques Vidal for short , (born December 31, 1955 in Santa Cruz , Coimbra ) is a Portuguese lawyer and since 2012 the Attorney General of Portugal.

Life

Education and career

Vidal was born on December 31, 1955, the fourth of six children to parents José Alberto de Almeida Marques Vidal and Maria Joana Lobo de Portugal Sanches de Morais Ribeiro Raposo. Her father worked as the head of the Portuguese Criminal Police (Polícia Judiciária) . After completing her school education, Vidal began studying law at the University of Lisbon , which she graduated in July 1978.

Then, in October 1979, she started working for the Portuguese Public Prosecutor's Office in Coimbra. In 1980 she was transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the public prosecutor's office for the district (comarca) Vila Viçosa , and later she worked for the public prosecutor's offices in the districts of Seixal and Cascais . During her tenure in Cascais, she was the first chairman of the Committee on the Protection of Minors. In January 1994, Vidal was promoted to prosecutor and transferred to the Lisbon district. There she worked at the courts for families, minors, petty criminals, the criminal court and the Tribunal da Boa-Hora. After the creation of the Court for Families and Minors (Tribunal de Família e Menores de Lisboa) , she coordinated the prosecution there.

From January 1999 to 2002, Vidal was an associate member of the Council of the National Public Prosecutor's Office (Conselho Superior do Ministério Público) , and from 2002 to 2004 she was deputy director of the Center for Legal Studies (Centro de Estudos Judiciários) . In July 2004 the government appointed her Deputy Attorney General, and in November 2004 she moved to the Minister of State for the Azores as a legal examiner. At the same time, she was the Prosecutor's Representative at the Azores Department of the National Audit Office.

Tenure as first female attorney general

On October 12, 2012, the government and President Cavaco Silva appointed her as the new General Prosecutor of Portugal with a term of six years. She succeeded Fernando José Pinto Monteiro and was the first woman to hold this office. During her six-year tenure, Vidal indicted numerous well-known politicians - such as former socialist prime minister José Sócrates - and other members of the Portuguese upper class of corruption and nepotism; Civil society critics in particular praised the attorney general for her “fearlessness” towards politics. Among other things, she charged the former Vice President of Angola and head of the Angolan state oil producer Sonangol , Manuel Domingos Vicente , with allegations of money laundering and bribery. The investigation into Vicente already led to diplomatic conflicts between Portugal and Angola.

Vidal has represented her country several times internationally, for example at the Ibero-American Symposium on Narcotics Crime on May 31, 2016 in Buenos Aires, or in Cuba, at the 13th international scientific meeting on criminal law .

At the beginning of 2018 it became known that the socialist minority government under António Costa decided not to extend the mandate, which expired in October 2018, for another six years. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa , the opposition, the media and civil society actors criticized the government, especially Justice Minister Francisca Van Dunem , for this decision. Critics see political reasons for this, since Angola is one of Portugal's important export markets and the recently elected Angolan President João Lourenço criticized Vidal's investigation. The socialist government had initially claimed that the constitution provided for a one-time term of six years and that an extension was not possible, but this has since been refuted.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ana Henriques: Os seis anos de “Joaninha” sem medo na PGR. In: Público. January 8, 2018, accessed January 20, 2018 (Portuguese). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} CURRÍCULO DA PROCURADORA-GERAL DA REPÚBLICA. Ministério Público Portugal, accessed January 20, 2018 (Portuguese). 
3. ^ ^{A b} Tilo Wagner: Attorney General under pressure. Deutschlandfunk, January 18, 2018, accessed on January 20, 2018 (Portuguese). 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Ex-colony Angola stirs up Portugal's domestic politics. Der Standard, January 20, 2018, accessed January 20, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Contribution by Joana Marques Vidals to the Jornada de Procuradores y Fiscales Generales de Iberoamérica sobre Narcocriminalidad on May 31, 2016 in Buenos Aires, Argentina , video recording on YouTube , accessed on January 21, 2018
6. ↑ Joana Marques Vidal at the XIII. Encuentro Internacional Ciencias Penales 2016 , video recording on YouTube, accessed on January 21, 2018
7. ↑ São José Almeida: Constituição permite novo mandato da procuradora-geral, Costa adia. In: Público. January 9, 2018, accessed January 20, 2018 (Portuguese).