Miguel Fernando Cassola de Miranda Relvas (born 5 September 1961) is a Portuguese politician and former Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party.
The Head the Portuguese Order of the Architects claimed in July 2012 that when Miguel Relvas was secretary of state in 2003 he sought to influence the awarding of a public procurement contract in favour of a company where (future Prime-Minister) Pedro Passos Coelho worked.
[22] Moreover, it was also revealed that during Miguel Relvas' term as Secretary of State of Local Administration the large majority of EU financial support for two training programs in Portugal's center region were channelled to Tecnoforma but that the intended results never materialized.
[28] For undetermined reasons, Miguel Relvas first sought to limit press exposure of the case (see below) and then to distance himself from it, including by stating under oath that he had only once casually met Silva Carvalho.
[29] The "caso das secretas" has an internal PSD party dimension as one of the targeted personalities in Silva Carvalho's stolen personal files was former Portuguese prime-minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão who, like Relvas, is from the social-democratic party PSD[30] but is at odds with Relvas over the privatization of a public TV channel that would increase competition on the channel (SIC) owned by Balsemão media group.
"[31] Alleged intimidation of the press - Miguel Relvas found himself in a potentially criminal situation when the Público daily newspaper reported that he attempted to blackmail one of its journalists not to pursue a story on "caso das secretas" (see above).
[36] Denial of responsibility - To date, Miguel Relvas has never acknowledged wrongdoing or impropriety in any of his political, business, or academic endeavors, even when he was compelled to resign as a result of the irregularities in the attribution of his university degree (see below).
Miguel Relvas enrolled in 1984 at Universidade Livre, of Lisbon, where he sought to obtain a law-degree but completed just one course (political science and constitutional law) with the lowest passing grade (10 out of 20).
The credit equivalencies were awarded on the basis of his "rich professional experience" by the Dean of the university himself (Fernando Santos Neves) and were not made explicit in terms of the individual courses exempted.
Miguel Relvas was only required to complete 4 courses (which he did with comfortable grades although there seem to be no records of him attending classes or taking tests) and was awarded in 2007 a BA degree with GPA of 11 (out of 20).
The Ministry of Education referred the process to the Portugal's Public Attorney's Office with a view to the revocation of Miguel Relvas' university degree, which took place by court decision in June 2016.
The second consisted of all sorts of ironic claims to academic degrees on the basis of equivalencies for vaguely related activities (for ex: engineer for having played with Lego blocks).
He separated after becoming government Minister in 2011 and publicly assumed a relationship with Marta Sousa a PSD campaign staff 17 years his junior he had met in 2010 when she worked in the publishing of a book by Passos Coelho.