Last year’s corruption case, (the first one), which resulted in three arrests, and led to the President of Madeira, being made a defendant, continues to be investigated by the Judiciary Police (PJ).
“All investigations that do not have an order by the Public Prosecutor’s Office are investigations that are ongoing,” said Luís Neves, National Director of the PJ, this morning, on the sidelines of the swearing-in of the new director of the PJ in Madeira, who believes that of news about the case is “a good sign.”
“It’s a good thing we don’t know (…) The only ones who need to know what is happening with the investigation, are those leading the investigation.”
The director also reminded all those present that the Judicial Police officers that were seconded from the mainland were here because the Madeira Judicial Police has less than 10% of the manpower required to undertake such an operation.”
“We, on the mainland, when we carry out operations with 200/300 people, have to use officers from all over the country as we cannot paralyze a team because of one operation. This has been happening for decades and will continue to be the norm, as in certain cases, we simply do not have enough manpower to undertake some investigations, without outside help.
When asked if it made sense to send about 100 PJ officers to Madeira, he answered, that if that’s what’s needed then it makes sense.
The case against Eduardo Jesus has been dropped due to lack of evidence and ‘absence of crime.”
New structure for computer scams
Regarding computer scams, which are on the rise in Portugal and across the globe, Luís Neves says that a new organisational structure is being prepared to achieve a deep knowledge of what is happening.
The national director of the PJ recalled that the different operations unleashed have made it possible to identify the different ‘modus operandi’ of the criminals, highlighting the well-known ‘Hello Father/Hello Mother’ scam.
“There are thousands of citizens who have been deceived, some with small amounts, others have been scammed out of larger sums of money. What is certain is that the successive operations we have undertaken in recent months have resulted in the detention of several suspects and the seizure of a lot of technological equipment, has drastically lowered their operability.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com