One of the country’s ‘leading lawyers’ working for a top law firm is in police custody on suspicion of having committed ‘hundreds’ of crimes involving the sexual abuse of young children.
According to tabloid Correio da Manhã this morning, Paulo Abreu dos Santos has ‘confessed his crimes’ to a judge who remanded him in preventive custody over the weekend.
“Until the weekend, (Abreu dos Santos) was an assistant guest professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, and he practised law at the prestigious company Ana Bruno & Associados, which is responsible for complex cases like the (alleged) money-laundering of Álvaro Sobrinho, the former head of BES Angola.”
Before that, Paulo Abreu dos Santos was an assistant working for former Justice Minister Catarina Sarmento e Castro.
In other words, he moved in gilded circles. This is all the more disturbing for the fact that the case being built against him is looking into the identity of some of his alleged victims, suggesting they may be the children of friends (who will have had no idea of any abuse having been taking place).
Today, the law firm Ana Bruno & Associates has a statement on its homepage, which reads:
“Having been surprised by reports of the involvement of former employee Dr. Paulo Abreu Santos in a serious criminal investigation, the Company is shocked and dismayed by the content of these reports.
“Being completely unaware of and unacquainted with the alleged conduct of Dr. Paulo Abreu Santos, the Company trusts, as always, that the competent institutions will carry out their work in order to ascertain the truth of the facts and draw the appropriate legal conclusions.”
CM suggests that Abreu Santos faces crimes of child pornography and the sexual abuse of minors.
Child pornography carries a maximum jail sentence of five years; the sexual abuse of minors eight.
“The big question” , CM stresses is that there are allegedly ‘hundreds of crimes’ at issue – meaning the ultimate jail term – if everything is proven in a court of law – could be a great deal more. CM suggests a maximum jail sentence of 25 years.
HOW DID THESE ALLEGED CRIMES BECOME NOTICED?
This is the curious aspect of the case. According to CM, it was the FBI – in a mega investigation that took in Portugal – that first flagged images on encrypted sites. Armed with the IP addresses, the FBI enlisted the help of Portugal’s PJ criminal police – and these tracked the IP addresses down to the Justice ministry, and to Paulo Abreu Santos’ home address.
“At (the lawyer’s) home around 500 files of international images and explicit sex videos were seized” when the PJ mounted searches in the company of a magistrate and on the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
All the images and videos involved children aged between four years old and 14. Two of the children “aged 10, are Portuguese”, says CM.
“Everything indicates that some of these images will have been filmed by (Abreu dos Santos), with his mobile phone,” the paper continues.
“There was other content that could have been accessed on child pornography sites, leading to suspicions that Abreu dos Santos used platforms where other predators sold images for the sexual satisfaction of buyers.
“CM knows that the PJ is trying to find out who the children who appear on the images are. There is the possibility that they are the children of the lawyer’s friends – and that the (incidents) may have occurred without the knowledge of the children’s parents.”
Source: Correio da Manhã/
