Previously brought a newborn into Portugal in October
A Portuguese businessman is in preventive custody for the alleged trafficking of children after being found trying to legalise the second newborn from Brazil in a matter of weeks.
A first baby was brought into the country in October. She is now three-months old and has been handed over to a foster home.
She was recovered from the businessman’s address in Valongo where he lives with his partner.
The infant is “in good health”. According to reports citing Brazilian Federal police, the businessman allegedly paid to “register a girl, less than a month old, as his biological daughter, by falsifying the documents necessary for this registration, as well as other documents that allowed him, from the outset, to regulate parental authority, custody of the minor and her transport to Portugal”.
The child was brought to Portugal on October 24, and a month later, “the same suspect returned to Brazil and carried out the same procedure, with a view to achieving the same result with another newborn, this time a male, which led to his arrest”, adds a source from PJ judicial police..
The businessman’s male partner (also described as a businessman) has been equally cited as an official suspect in this investigation, and faces questioning.
Neither suspect is understood to have a criminal record.
This particular investigation kicked off after reports of a baby “abandoned by his mother in hospital in Valinhos (Brazil) saw authorities connecting ‘the dots’. The baby’s father was registered as a Portuguese citizen who only the month before had claimed paternity over a baby girl, born (and abandoned) in the same hospital.
Investigations in Brazil have rounded up a number of other suspects in the towns of Valinhos and Itatiba, which “suggests”, says SIC, “the participation of various people in this trafficking network.
“Those involved face charges of international child trafficking, false registry, promotion of an act intended to send a child or adolescent abroad without observing legal formalities and/ or with the aim of making a profit, among other offences, punishable by sentences of up to 18 years in prison”.
According to SIC, the businessman is known to have travelled to and from Brazil four times in recent years: in 2015, 2021 and then twice this year. Brazilian police are now trying to ascertain whether he ‘bought’ babies on the first two occasions, and if so, where are they now?
Source material: SIC Notícias
