I fully agree that normal processing will never resume. One needs to keep in mind that lawsuit is needed in all intermediate steps until passport in hand.
The dreadful reason of why ARI is badly treated by the government is because money goes first, service comes later. Govt already keeps our money and the only way for them to keep our money in a longer time is to treat us as badly as possible.
In contrary of GV, govt needs to treat D7 as nicely as possible. Because if people under D7 do not have visa, they will not come spend their money (passive income/pension/…) in Portugal.
If now, GV is designed in such a way that investors only transfer money within 30 days after they have GV in hand. Then all of sudden, waiting time could be no more than 10 days.
That’s why I keep repeating that portuguese politician are cunning like foxes. They create a sweet condition of GV - 7 days/year - which no other countries in EU could offer. It is indeed a trap and one needs to consider very carefully because all lawyers are shitty. I am 100% sure that by now lawyers know that it could take up to or even longer than 5 years to receive the 1st card. But they never tell the worst case scenario. They only tell the best case scenario: “well, one of our clients has just got his 1st card after 14 months”. That’s all they do. Trying their best to deliver the lip service in order to take money from investors.