The undue reimbursements are said to be worth “more than half a million euros”. The PJ carried out 71 search and seizure warrants.
Five people, aged between 23 and 55, were arrested this Tuesday in Madeira during an operation by the Judiciary Police (PJ), entitled Rota do Viajante II (Traveler’s Route II), related to the social mobility allowances granted to residents of the archipelago when traveling by plane to the mainland.
In a statement sent to Notícias ao Minuto, the PJ confirms not only the arrests for defrauding the state, but also reveals that 71 search and seizure warrants were carried out, both at home and abroad.
The searches took place in Lisbon, Loures and the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM), namely in the municipalities of Funchal, Santa Cruz and Câmara de Lobos.
According to the PJ, the purpose of the raids was “to gather evidence in order to consolidate the ongoing investigation into the crimes of criminal association, qualified fraud, falsification or counterfeiting of documents and money laundering, all of which are considered highly organized crime”.
Fraud exceeds half a million euros
The investigation found that the defendants, “with the aim of obtaining large illegitimate economic profits”, developed a criminal scheme to obtain illegitimate profits through the social mobility allowance, related to hundreds of non-existent trips, “in the overall value of undue reimbursements of more than half a million euros”.
The plan involved recruiting residents of the Madeira archipelago, who were provided with the documents needed to withdraw this subsidy and which had been previously falsified, such as airline tickets, tickets and reservations, invoices and receipts, who, accompanied by members of the criminal network, presented forged documentation at CTT stations on the mainland and thus received the reimbursement paid by the state, as CNN Portugal had reported earlier this morning.
Criminal association with “high levels of organization”
The criminal association now dismantled showed high levels of organization, with different hierarchical levels, made up of counterfeiters, recruiters/anglers and controllers.
Operation Rota do Viajante II involved investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Unit and the Madeira Criminal Investigation Department. During the police action, inspectors collected “extensive evidence related to the criminal practice under investigation, namely through the execution of around 40 witness interviews”.
The defendants will now be brought before the judicial authority at the TIC in Loures for the application of coercive measures. The investigation continues under the responsibility of the PJ.
Flight subsidy fraud exceeds 6 million
In the same note sent to Notícias ao Minuto, the PJ recalls that, in the context of this case, one defendant is already in pre-trial detention and that over the last five years, several police operations have been carried out, aimed at dismantling criminal networks dedicated to the fraudulent use of the social mobility allowance in Madeira and the Azores, with a total value of fraud to the state coffers of more than six million euros.
In the same note, the inspectors praise “the decisive role and collaboration of the Portuguese Air Force, whose support was crucial to safeguarding the integrity of the investigation, in the operational assembly of the human and logistical device, in the transportation of the detained defendants and the evidence seized, within the legal deadline for their presentation”.
