Chega's president, André Ventura, has been fined in €438.81 for discriminating against Roma, in relation to a publication written in August on Facebook, according to the Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination (CICDR).
According to the CICDR's decision, to which Lusa News Agency accessed, the only deputy of the extreme right parliamentary party practiced an administrative offense, punishable by a fine, for “discrimination based on ethnical origin”.
The publication of André Ventura, who is also presidential candidate, was dated 21 August 2020 and the subject of a complaint by Letras Nómadas (Association for the Research and Promotion of Roma Communities) was accompanied by a graphic about the “main sources of income of individuals by age group”.
“The truth always prevails. Almost 90 percent of the Roma community lives on 'other things' than their own work. As long as we do not realise that there is a structural problem of benefits dependence, it will continue to grow uncontrollably”, wrote the leader of Chega at the time.
André Ventura has constantly attacked the Roma community in Portugal and, on 16 November, in an interview with TVI, he even put it as a condition for enabling an extreme-right government to “resolve the issue of Roma”.
