“Suspect customs officials can stay in their jobs” – judicial source
After all the flurry of news earlier this week, it transpires that the ports / customs workers arrested on suspicion of corruption, drug trafficking and money laundering, were not actually cited for these crimes, and have all been released to go back to their jobs.
In the words of a judicial source cited by Correio da Manhã today: “There are customs officials suspected of receiving money from drug traffickers who can continue working in the same places where the crimes were committed”.
The judicial source was clearly not pleased about the situation – but it all stems from the paperwork with which PJ police undertook their swoop on Tuesday.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office did not issue any arrest warrants for detention out of ‘flagrante delicto’, meaning suspects could only be arrested for what at that specific moment they were doing that was illegal.
In the case of the four arrested, they were variously in possession of anabolic steroids and illegal weapons.
Thus the investigation continues, and the ‘more than 15 official suspects’ also cited will also be able to continue working at their posts in the nation’s ports, even though they are all suspected of having turned (at the very least) a blind eye to large quantities of drugs smuggled into the country in containers from Latin American countries.
CM suggests the blind eye came with benefits: €1,000 per kilo – and that major criminal organisations are/ were behind the scheme – but all this will have to be proved at a later stage.
