At issue is the investigation of the OE conducted in 2019 by the General Inspectorate for Health Activities (IGAS), at the time led by the now STJ magistrate, following a determination by the then Minister of Health, Marta Temido.

The report on the IGAS action would be known in July of that year, indicating the existence of grounds for dissolving the bodies of the OE, in addition to having also discovered expenses without justification from the head of the Order at the time and evidence of participation in the "surgical strike" by nurses in late 2018 and early 2019, which paralyzed operating rooms in the country.

According to the STJ's decision this week, to which Lusa had access, the appeal by the OE and Ana Rita Cavaco sought to reverse the previous rejection due to "legal inadmissibility" of the request to open proceedings against Leonor Furtado (among others), an initiative that had also been an attempt to counter the order to shelve the investigation.

The organization and the former head of the Order attributed to the former IGAS inspector general and current judge the crimes of entering a place closed to the public, coercion, damage, kidnapping, theft, abuse of power, defamation, offense to a legal person and unlawful access to computer data. However, the investigation was shelved in relation to Leonor Furtado due to the statute of limitations for some of the crimes and the absence of facts in the complaint that indicated the commission of these crimes.

In response to the shelving, a request was submitted to open proceedings in which "serious deficiencies" were pointed out in the investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office, understanding that "there would be several other essential and indispensable diligences for discovering the truth" of what occurred in the investigation, with a view to conducting an investigation by the investigating judge.

"They resorted to means that were inappropriate to the case and legally inadmissible," reads the STJ ruling of April 17, which confirmed the previous rejection of opening proceedings and added: "They asked the investigating judge to conduct the investigation that the Public Prosecutor's Office did not conduct. (...) The judge cannot be asked to replace the Public Prosecutor's Office investigation with another.".

For the STJ, "the investigation cannot be a repetition of the inquiry, a continuation of the inquiry or, in the most extreme cases, a replacement of the inquiry," and therefore the appeal was deemed "unfounded".

The 2019 investigation was strongly contested by the former head of the OE, who alleged the illegality of the action and considered that it was a persecution by the former Minister of Health, Marta Temido. The work of collecting information and documents by the IGAS inspectors, which was then led by the now judge Leonor Furtado, was also harshly criticized by Ana Rita Cavaco, who alleged the existence of several crimes in these proceedings.

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