Polícia Judiciária Storms Carris Santo Amaro and Maintenance-Company Premises Over the September 2025 Elevador da Glória Disaster — 20+ Inspectors, ~10 Home Searches and Joaquim Morgado on Homicídio por Negligência

The Polícia Judiciária (PJ) descended on the headquarters of Carris in Santo Amaro, Oeiras, and on the premises of the elevator's maintenance contractor on the morning of Friday 29 May 2026, executing the most operationally significant phase of the criminal investigation into the 3 September 2025 Elevador da Glória derailment that killed 16 people and injured dozens more. The operation was conducted at the request of the Ministério Público through the Departamento de Investigação e Acção Penal (DIAP) de Lisboa.

Prosecutor Joaquim Morgado, who has been leading the criminal investigation since the immediate aftermath of the disaster, accompanied the searches on the ground. The PJ deployed more than 20 inspectors across the corporate sites and an estimated 10 residential addresses tied to senior personnel at Carris and the maintenance company. The legal foundation for the searches is the active inquérito framed around two suspected offences: homicídio por negligência (homicide by negligence) and violação das regras de segurança (violation of safety regulations).

The investigative anchor: a cable that should not have been there

The preliminary report on the disaster — published in the months following the September 2025 incident — concluded that the traction cable on the Ascensor da Glória, installed in 2022, was not certified for use in installations transporting people. The cable showed wear consistent with the load profile of a passenger funicular but had been procured outside the technical certification chain that the regulation requires for human-carrying systems. That single finding is the structural anchor for both the criminal and the civil-liability investigations now running in parallel.

Following the publication of the preliminary report, the Director of Maintenance at Carris resigned. The company has consistently maintained that it followed all relevant safety protocols. Mayor Carlos Moedas, who chairs Carris's municipal-shareholder structure through the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, requested an external and independent investigation in the immediate aftermath of the disaster — a request that runs alongside the PJ-led criminal track and the parallel administrative investigation by the Autoridade de Mobilidade e dos Transportes (AMT).

What today's operation actually changes

• Date of searches: Friday 29 May 2026
• Lead prosecutor: Joaquim Morgado, DIAP Lisboa
• PJ deployment: 20+ inspectors
• Locations: Carris HQ (Santo Amaro, Oeiras), maintenance contractor premises, ~10 residential addresses
• Charges under investigation: Homicídio por negligência and violação das regras de segurança
• Underlying incident: Elevador da Glória derailment, 3 September 2025, 16 fatalities
• Investigation status: Segredo de justiça (judicial secrecy) currently applies

The searches mark the transition from documentary-evidence-gathering to seizure and digital forensics — phones, internal emails, procurement records, maintenance logs, contracts and the chain-of-custody documentation around the 2022 cable installation. The standard PJ playbook in cases involving corporate-and-individual liability is to lock down digital evidence at company sites simultaneously with personal devices at residential addresses to prevent coordinated destruction or alteration. The size of the deployment — 20+ inspectors across multiple sites — is consistent with that operational model.

The political and administrative backdrop

The PJ raids land in a week when the parallel 28 May PJ sweep on PS câmaras, juntas and the Largo do Rato HQ deployed 400 inspectors and seven DIAP Lisboa prosecutors on a separate corruption-and-prevaricação file. The two operations are unrelated in substance, but together they signal an intensified investigative tempo from the Lisboa Departamento de Investigação e Acção Penal in the run-up to summer recess.

Carris itself — wholly owned by the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — is also at the centre of the wider CML governance and storm-aid coordination file that has dominated the local political agenda through May. The PJ raid will reopen the public-confidence question on the operator's ability to manage the Glória, Lavra and Bica funiculars — all of which were suspended in the aftermath of the September 2025 incident and have only progressively returned to scheduled service under reinforced inspection regimes.

What This Means for Expats

• Funicular service status: The PJ operation does not affect the day-to-day operation of the three Lisbon funiculars. The Glória, Lavra and Bica are running under the post-September 2025 reinforced-inspection regime and any change to scheduled service would be communicated by Carris directly via the carris.pt operating notices.
• Tourist-route impact: The Ascensor da Glória connects Praça dos Restauradores to the Bairro Alto / Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara axis — one of the most heavily used tourist routes in the city. Foreign residents hosting visitors should expect normal service this weekend and through the European summer.
• Personal-injury-claim window: The 16 fatalities and the wider injured-passenger cohort retain personal-injury and wrongful-death claim rights against Carris and the maintenance contractor irrespective of the criminal track. The civil window runs separately from the criminal investigation and the segredo de justiça does not foreclose civil action.
• Public-safety culture: The 2022-cable-certification finding is a documented systems-failure case study — relevant for foreign residents involved in compliance, safety-management or critical-infrastructure work in Portugal who may be asked to use it as a reference incident in internal audits and training.
• Municipal-governance accountability: Carris is a CML asset. The PJ raid raises the political stakes for Carlos Moedas's October 2026 re-election campaign and for the next municipal mandate's brief on transport-operator oversight. Foreign residents voting in the autárquicas (those with the requisite residency and registration) will see this file resurface in the campaign cycle.
• Insurance and travel-cover implications: Personal travel-insurance and resident-comprehensive policies typically cover passenger-transport-incident liability irrespective of operator fault. Foreign residents with Portuguese resident-level health cover under SNS or private (Médis, Multicare, AdvanceCare, Future Healthcare) face no additional coverage requirement from today's news.

The criminal investigation now enters the seizure-and-forensics phase that typically runs six to twelve months before a charging decision. The next operational milestone will be the constituição de arguidos of the named Carris and maintenance-company personnel — a formal step that will name the individuals at the centre of the criminal liability question. Until that point, segredo de justiça will continue to limit what the Ministério Público can disclose about the names, the specific evidence base and the procurement-chain documentation now being secured.