Prosecutors in Portugal are currently searching premises belonging to UPAT — the judicial police's technological support unit — based at the PJ school in Barro, Loures, on the northern edge of Lisbon. The operation targets documents connected to a complaint against Carlos Cabreiro, the national director of the PJ criminal police, who stands accused of giving false testimony.
The story stretches back more than a decade to the Football Leaks affair, the massive leak that exposed secret financial dealings in European football. At the centre of the current complaint is an alleged unauthorised wiretap: prosecutors believe records may prove that the lawyer of Rui Pinto — then an unknown hacker, later revealed as the Football Leaks source — was illegally monitored during a meeting at a petrol station with representatives of Doyen, the football investment firm.
The case resurfaced recently when David Freitas, husband of PJ investigator Aida Freitas, says he found material in the UPAT archives pointing to those wiretaps. She is herself on trial for alleged false statements about the affair, and if her husband's findings hold up, it could suggest she has no case to answer — and that Cabreiro, who then headed the PJ's cybercrime unit, misled the court years ago. Freitas claims to have discovered a mission order for the wiretaps, allegedly requested by Cabreiro without proper authorisation, plus a report signed by four PJ inspectors. He has since been transferred and faces disciplinary proceedings himself.
A judge will hear Aida Freitas and other witnesses on October 16, and today's searches are widely seen as an attempt to locate that mission order — if it exists. An investigation by Sábado suggests it may. The affair lands at an awkward moment for the PJ, which is already under political scrutiny, and Expresso has been reporting the details as they emerge.
For visitors to Portugal, this is an internal judicial drama rather than anything that touches daily life or travel. But it's a useful reminder of how prominent the Football Leaks saga remains in Portuguese public life — it's one of the country's biggest recent legal stories, and a case that journalists, lawyers and football fans across Europe have followed closely. If you're heading to Lisbon, none of this affects safety or practicalities; it simply makes for fascinating context if you pick up a local paper over coffee. Portugal's courts and police institutions are functioning normally, and the story says more about the strength of press scrutiny here than about any risk to visitors.
The bigger takeaway for travellers is cultural rather than practical: Lisbon's proximity to this ongoing legal saga — with hearings, raids and front-page exposes unfolding minutes from the tourist heart of the city — is part of what makes Portugal such an engaged, news-hungry place to visit. Read a little while you're there.
Source material: Expresso
