LISBON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Portugal's former prime minister Jose Socrates spent his third night at a police station on Sunday and will remain in custody for further questioning Monday for charges related to alleged corruption, money-laundering and tax fraud.
Socrates, 57, was heard by the criminal judge Carlos Alexandre after he was arrested at a Lisbon airport late Friday night on a flight arriving from Paris.
The former Socialist Party leader was expected to make a declaration on Monday, Socrates' lawyer, Joao Araujo, said on Sunday. Judges were expected to reveal the measures to be taken against Socrates later on Monday.
The former Socialist leader was in office from 2005 to 2011 and helped negotiate the 78-billion-euro bailout deal the country signed in May 2011 with its international lenders - the European Commisssion, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
He moved to Paris in 2011 after his resignation, and went on to study philosophy at Sciences Po University.
Socrates was implicated in the Hidden Face scandal in 2012 which involved officials linked to him who were charged with graft, money laundering and influence peddling. In 2011, prosecutors also tried to reopen a case involving Socrates known as the 2002 Freeport scandal in which he allegedly accepted bribes, together with two plaintiffs, for the construction of a shopping mall on the outskirts of Lisbon.
Jose Manuel Fernandes, a political analyst and publisher of the Observador newspaper, told Xinhua the case really took Portugal by surprise, despite there having been previous cases involving the prime minister.
Socrates' detention is an "atomic bomb" in the Portuguese political system, journalist Filipe Alves wrote in the Portuguese financial daily Diario Economico. "The detention of Socrates places the Socialist Party in difficulties and could cause confusion in next year's elections."
Socrates' detention is seen by some analysts as a blow to the Socialist Party, which is fighting to return to office next year.
"There will be consequences, which will depend on both militant and on public opinion, but we cannot know to what extent it will affect the elections which are still a year away," a leading political analyst, Antonio Costa Pinto, told Xinhua. "There is great uncertainty."
