THE wheels of justice turn slowly in Portugal but they do come full circle, as the ''fatal fax'' former governor of Macau, Carlos Montez Melancia, has come to understand during the long four months of his trial for corruption before a Lisbon judge.
The verdict aside, the disgraced Portuguese apparatchik, 66, knows his reputation, and the likely prospects of the socialist party to be returned to office, in the next general election have been seriously damaged.
Some of the mud about his alleged acceptance of money for business favours is bound to stick, and it is expected that political associates of Melancia, personally appointed by Portuguese President Mario Soares, will also be splattered.
To his prosecutor, Melancia's alleged offences were the classic sins of a man corrupted by high office. He had been charged with accepting part of HK$2.8 million in bribes paid by a German company, Weidleplan GmbH, to secure a consultancy contract for the new Macau international airport and there was a fax to support the allegations.
As the evidence before the court claimed, Melancia allegedly had accepted the bribe in 1988, less than a year after he was appointed governor of Macau in July 1987.
Rumours about the governor's flexibility when dealing with contractors had circulating in the colony for 18 months but it was not until February 1990, when Helena Sanches Osorio, a journalist with the weekly Lisbon newspaper O Independente, wrote the fatal fax story, that the governor was placed under pressure to resign.
In her article, Ms Osorio claimed that the Stuttgart-based company had sent a fax to the governor's ''hotline'', and demanded a refund for bribes paid because he had not fulfilled his part of the deal.
