Vítor Parente Ribeiro also asked the court to pay special attention to one witness in particular, António Leão. “I ask the court to pay special attention to the way this witness appears and disappears in the process.”
It is expected that the defendant’s defense will attack the MP’s accusation for what it has already unsuccessfully considered in the pre-trial phase, and which is based on the allegation that the process is based on “lies, misrepresentations” and “prohibited evidence”. Ruben Oliveira, imprisoned since June 2021, is accused of leading a criminal cocaine trafficking group, with “close links with the criminal organizations of Comando Vermelho, in Brazil, and the Medellin Cartel, in Colombia”, reads the MP’s accusation, and with ramifications on the Ports of Setúbal, Sines and Leixões and Lisbon Airport”.
At those landing sites, the PJ carried out cocaine seizures involving defendants who allegedly obeyed Rúben Oliveira’s orders. Cocaine was introduced into Portugal through companies importing fruit and other food and non-food goods, using maritime containers. The drug was also included in travel bags, by air, from Brazil to Portugal.
The accusation also indicates that the defendants used “encrypted systems typically used by the world’s largest criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking and violent crime” to communicate with each other. “Xuxas”, identified by investigators as one of the biggest Portuguese drug traffickers, has been in preventive detention in the high-security Monsanto prison since the end of June 2022.
