Manuel Pinho

Manuel António Gomes de Almeida de Pinho is a former Portuguese Minister of Economy and Innovation (2005–09) who achieved greater notoriety after he left office for being prosecuted and convicted on multiple charges of passive corruption, tax fraud, and money laundering. In 2024 he was sentenced to 10-years in prison and a fine in the amount of 4.9 million euros that he was shown to have received while in office in secret lump sum and monthly offshore pay-offs from his longtime mentor Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado in exchange for benefitting Salgado's Espírito Santo Financial Group that Pinho rejoined after he left office. Pinho has remained under house arrest since 2021, which was extended in April 2025 when his appeal to overturn the conviction was denied by Lisbon's First Appellate Court. As of November 2025, a subsequent appeal to Portugal's Supreme Court was pending and a complaint against the Portuguese state had been filed with the European Court of Human Rights. Manuel Pinho has admitted to improperly receiving payments offshore and evading the related taxes but has argued that those payments were owed to him and refuted the corruption charges publishing to that effect two books where he and his defense lawyer dispute the guilty verdict.