Judicial Police Declines to Renew Its Finance Director, Who Suggested Keeping a Seized Trailer at the Builder That Worked on the Interior Minister's Home
PJ national director Carlos Cabreiro did not renew Álvaro Pires, who according to RTP proposed the Construbarcelos storage and later gave a wrong cost figure that reached the Justice Minister. Pires says he was given no reason.
The Polícia Judiciária (PJ, Judicial Police) has not renewed the term of its finance director, Álvaro Pires: the official who suggested that a trailer seized in a cocaine case be kept at the yard of Construbarcelos, the building firm that did work on a home of the Interior Minister, Luís Neves. The PJ's national director, Carlos Cabreiro, took the decision, and Pires had also asked not to continue in the post, RTP reported on Wednesday.
In a short note quoted by RTP, the PJ said that "following the end of the service commissions of the director of Financial and Asset Management Services and of the director of Innovation and Development Services", its national directorate "did not propose to the ministry the renewal" of either. The note does not give a reason or name a successor.
Pires said he had not been told why. "I was informed, but the reasons were not given to me. They said the renewal was not opportune," he told Observador, in remarks carried by ECO.
The trailer and the cost figures
According to RTP, it was Pires who suggested to Luís Neves, then the PJ's national director, that the trailer seized in Operação Pacoba should be kept by Construbarcelos. The Barcelos firm also did work on a home of Neves, who left the PJ in February 2026 to become Minister of Internal Administration.
RTP also reports that Pires gave Cabreiro wrong information about how much it cost to destroy the material seized in the operation. Cabreiro passed that figure to the Justice Minister, Rita Alarcão Júdice, who then cited numbers in public that contradicted Neves's own account. Neves has argued that the decision about the trailer saved the state money. RTP describes Pires as very close to the minister, who once called him "the Mourinho of the Judiciária's finances".
How the affair has grown
Operação Pacoba was a December 2024 raid in which the PJ dismantled one of Europe's largest cocaine-processing laboratories. The trailer later turned up at the Construbarcelos yard, and in July prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into how it got there. Since then:
- August: the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) opened a verification process into 17 PJ contracts with Construbarcelos, worth about 2.3 million euros and partly paid from the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Verification is a preliminary step, not a criminal investigation.
- October: Parliament set up a committee of inquiry into Neves's years at the head of the PJ, from 2018 to 2026, and Chega's leader, André Ventura, chairs it.
- November: Neves came under fresh pressure over the police clearances of the housing camps, and on 1 November said his post was at the Prime Minister's disposal.
Neves has denied any wrongdoing throughout and says his private building work and the PJ's public contracts were entirely separate. No criminal charge has been brought against him.
What comes next
The departure removes from the PJ one of the officials closest to the minister while the parliamentary inquiry is under way. The committee's remit covers Neves's conduct as national director throughout his mandates and the responsibility of the ministers who appointed and oversaw him, and the trailer is among the topics it has listed.
