The Judiciary Police (PJ) has just issued a statement about the operation in Madeira, which it calls “Operation Rota do Viajante II”.
Police information indicates that the five detainees are suspected of “criminal association, qualified fraud and money laundering”
The police operation carried out “71 search and seizure warrants, domestic and non-domestic” – and not 40 as initially reported -, “as well as the arrest, outside of flagrante delicto, of five suspects of committing fraud against the State, within the scope of social mobility allowance”.
The searches took place in Lisbon, Loures and the Autonomous Region of Madeira, namely in the municipalities of Funchal, Santa Cruz and Câmara de Lobos.
The statement explains that “the steps now taken aimed at collecting evidence, in order to consolidate the ongoing investigation into the crimes of criminal association, qualified fraud, forgery or forgery of documents and money laundering, and the conduct that they are considered highly organized crime.”
The investigation found that the defendants, with the aim of obtaining large illegitimate economic profits, decided to develop a criminal scheme with the aim of obtaining illegitimate profits through the social mobility subsidy, related to hundreds of non-existent trips, with an overall value of undue reimbursements greater than to half a million euros.
According to the PJ, “the plan involved recruiting residents of RAM, who were provided with documents necessary to withdraw this subsidy and previously falsified, such as airline tickets, tickets and reservations, invoices and receipts, which, accompanied by elements of the network criminal, presented forged documentation at CTT stations on the continent and, thus, received reimbursement paid by the State”.
The now dismantled criminal association demonstrated “high levels of organization”, with different hierarchical levels, being made up of forgers, recruiters/raisers and controllers.
Operation ‘Rota do Viajante II’ involved investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Unit and the Madeira Criminal Investigation Department.
The defendants now detained, aged between 23 and 55, “will be presented to the judicial authority in due course, at the TIC in Loures, for the application of coercive measures”, he adds.
It should be noted that, within the scope of this process, there is already one defendant in preventive detention.
During the operation it was possible to collect “vast pieces of evidence” related to the criminal practice under investigation, namely through the execution of around 40 witness interviews.
The PJ, in the investigation led by the DIAP of Loures, will continue the investigation, after analyzing the evidence collected, aiming to fully investigate all criminal conduct.
The statement adds that, in the last five years, several police operations were carried out, aiming to dismantle criminal networks dedicated to the fraudulent use of the social mobility subsidy in RAM and the Autonomous Region of the Azores, “in a global amount of fraud to the State coffers of more than six million euros.”
The PJ also praised the decisive role and collaboration of the Portuguese Air Force, whose support was “crucial” in safeguarding the integrity of the investigation, in the operational assembly of the human and logistical device, in the transport of the detained defendants and the seized evidence, within the legal deadline for presentation of those.
