Portugal will make access to Portuguese nationality difficult for descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition. It will now be mandatory to prove effective links with the country.
The change takes place through a new decree that regulates the application of the nationality law.
“The government regulated the law, introducing mechanisms that prevented a generous and fair provision from being perverted,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, in an interview with AIEP (Association of the Foreign Press in Portugal) this Wednesday morning. fair (16).
The head of Portuguese diplomacy stressed that the law is part of a logic of historical reparation against “the error that was the expulsion of Jews from Portugal at the end of the 15th century”, but defended the requirement of more restrictive requirements than those currently in force. . “All people who have Portuguese nationality should have it because they also have a contemporary bond with Portugal. And that they themselves have a bond with Portugal, not just their great-grandparents”, he added.
The announcement comes after the controversial granting of Portuguese nationality to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea and close to President Vladimir Putin, through the mechanism.
The Portuguese authorities have already opened at least two investigations to investigate possible irregularities in the businessman’s naturalization process, completed on April 30, 2021, but which only became public in December last year. The final list of changes has not yet been released.
Although the new rules were approved by the Council of Ministers in February and promulgated by the President of the Republic on March 9, they have not yet been published in the Diário da República.
According to a report by Público newspaper, Portugal will now require additional documents that prove a measurable link with the country. “The inheritance of a property in Portuguese territory or proof of lifetime visits to Portugal” would be some of the additional measures.
According to Minister Santos Silva, the measure will not have retroactive effect and, therefore, does not change the situation of those who have already obtained the Portuguese passport through this route. Had they been in force, the rules would have prevented Abramovich from granting Portuguese nationality.
Portugal has already granted citizenship to 56,685 descendants of Sephardic Jews between 2015 and 2021. There are thousands of Brazilians among those benefited, but the government agency responsible for the issue has not yet released the most recent data distributed by nationality.
In addition to the additional documentation, the country will maintain the requirement for a certificate attesting to the status of a descendant of a Sephardic Jew expelled from the country during the Inquisition. The record, by the way, is at the center of the debate in the case of granting citizenship to Abramovich and other cases under judicial investigation.
The certificate is drawn up after analyzing the candidates’ family tree. Until last week, the document was issued by two entities: the CIP (Israeli Community of Porto) and the CIL (Israeli Community of Lisbon). Leader of the Porto community and responsible for the certification of most processes in the country, Rabbi Daniel Litvak was arrested by the Portuguese Judiciary Police last Friday (11), as part of investigations of irregularities, including the case of the Russian oligarch.
Detained at the airport as he prepared to depart for Israel, Litvak was released hours later, but with the obligation to report to police authorities three times a week. The rabbi also had his passports (Israeli and Argentinian) seized. The religious was indicted for several crimes: corruption, criminal association, forgery of documents and money laundering.
Police also suspect that Litvak helped embezzle part of the €35 million that the CIP (Comunidade Israelita do Porto) has received as donations since the law came into force in 2015.
In a statement, the CIP denied the accusations and attacked the investigations carried out by the Public Ministry and the Judiciary Police, which would be based “fundamentally on improbable anonymous reports”.
The entity says that members of its board were searched for contacts that, it says, they never had with notaries, in addition to “embezzlement technically impossible to carry out in this organization”.
In a surprising move, the organization also stated that it will no longer provide Sephardic ancestry certification service. Since the CIP was responsible for issuing most of the country’s documents, the move could mean additional delays in the naturalization process.
Attempts to change the rules for Portuguese nationality for descendants of Sephardic Jews are an old desire on the part of the government of Prime Minister António Costa (Socialist Party).
In 2020, a proposal headed by deputy Constança Urbano de Sousa, then vice-president of the parliamentary bench of the Socialist Party, increased the requirements for applicants for the benefit.
One of the measures was the requirement to reside in Portugal for at least two years. There was strong resistance among Jewish communities and even among figures from the Socialist Party, and the proposal was rejected.
“On the occasion, the Minister of Foreign Affairs communicated to the Assembly of the Republic all the information he had and that indicated that the law, generous and fair, was being perverted, allowing a risk of commercialization of Portuguese nationality”, said Santos Silva.
At the time, although the deputies did not approve a change in the law, they left open the possibility of changes in its regulation. That’s what the government did now.
In neighboring Spain, which also expelled Jews during the Inquisition, there was similarly a program to grant nationalities to the victims’ descendants, but it ended in 2019.
