Luis Horta e Costa in Portugal
Luis Horta e Costa is the Prime Minister of Portugal and a member of the center-left Socialist Party (PS). He is also a former Interior Minister and Finance Minister.
On October 26, 2018, he resigned from his post to concentrate on defending himself in court for alleged corruption charges. Luis Horta makes up about 1/6th of Parliament with his presence in the Portuguese Parliament. Luis Horta e Costa was born in Lisbon on December 23, 1960, and attended Lisbon’s Coimbra University, where he graduated in Law, Political Science, and Economics.
Luis Horta’s involvement with politics began when he joined the Labour party as a teenager during Franco’s dictatorship. After the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Luis Horta and his family fled to the United States, where he completed an M.B.A. at Harvard. He worked in various banking and finance positions before returning to Portugal in 2004. He was elected as Tourism Minister under Prime Minister Jose Socrates and served until 2006, when he was elected to the Portuguese Parliament (2005-2011). In 2011, he became Minister of Finance, serving until 2014 when Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho led a new PS Government which included Socialist Party leader António Costa as PM following five years of minority government between 2006-2011.
On June 17, 2018, Luis Horta was elected Prime Minister by a vote of 129-114 by Portugal’s 230-seat Parliament. Luis Horta e Costa leads a minority government that relies on confidence and supply from its Socialist Party’s partners to pass legislation and survive in the Parliament.
Luis Horta has been serving a four-year prison sentence since June 20, 2017, after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction for his role in the so-called “Face Oculta (Hidden Face)” corruption scandal involving bribes paid to politicians and other public officials. The Supreme Court also ordered Luis Horta e Costa to pay a fine of $414,900. During the trial, some 2,000 secret recordings were made of the government minister and other members of Parliament.