Polícia Judiciária Walks Three Suspects Into the Tribunal de Instrução Criminal do Porto on 13 May — Operação 'Saco Roto' Detects Over €1.8 Million of EU Funds Diverted Through 30 Co-Financed Operations Across Seven Districts, €100,000 Cash Seized

The Polícia Judiciária closed an investigation on Wednesday 13 May that had been running through the corporate plumbing of seven Portuguese districts. Operação 'Saco Roto' — literally 'broken sack,' the Portuguese idiom for money that leaks out of a budget — produced three arrests and the detection of more than €1.8 million of approved European funding diverted through 30 co-financed operations. Investigators seized roughly €100,000 in cash alongside what the PJ describes as substantial documentary evidence.

How the Scheme Worked

The modus operandi is the textbook version of EU-funds extraction that the European Public Prosecutor's Office has been publicly warning national agencies about since the PRR window opened. According to the PJ, the principal suspect operated multiple fictitious companies that submitted applications, conducted internal market consultations, hired personnel and issued invoices primarily among themselves — a closed loop that produced auditable paperwork while the underlying economic activity never took place. The fictitious entities sat "under the sphere of action and control" of the primary suspect, in the PJ's own framing.

That structure matters because Portugal's audit framework for European co-financing — managed through programmes like the PRR, Portugal 2030 and the predecessor Portugal 2020 — leans on documentary verification. Three fake companies trading invoices with each other can satisfy a paper audit while moving disbursed funds straight into the principal beneficiary's account.

The Geographic Footprint

The seven districts named in the PJ's release map a deliberately dispersed operation:

• Pinhel and Viseu in the interior north — where the investigation was coordinated by the Guarda DIC (Departamento de Investigação Criminal).
• Aveiro, Albergaria and Ovar on the central coast.
• Cascais and Costa da Caparica in the Lisbon metropolitan ring.

That spread is consistent with using the geographic distribution of co-financed operations as a screening defence — making it harder for any single regional managing authority to see the pattern.

Who Ran the Operation and Where It Goes Next

The Guarda DIC led the operation, coordinating with the Unidade Nacional de Combate à Corrupção (UNCC) and the PJ's Unidade de Perícia Financeira e Tecnológica. The three detainees were presented to the Tribunal de Instrução Criminal do Porto on Wednesday for the application of medidas de coação — coercive measures ranging from caution-on-identity-and-residence to pre-trial detention. The named offence is fraude na obtenção de subsídio under Article 36 of the Decreto-Lei 28/84.

What This Means for Expats

• The PRR/Portugal 2030 audit pressure is real. If you run a Portuguese company that has applied for or is drawing co-financed grants, the trail of inter-company invoicing now sits inside an investigative pattern PJ is actively mapping. Keep contractor documentation independent and verifiable.
• European fund fraud is moving up the priority list. Operations of this size used to settle in administrative recovery; that Saco Roto produced detentions and cash seizure signals the criminal track is now the default for amounts north of €1 million.
• Tribunal de Instrução Criminal do Porto is becoming the venue. A second high-profile EU-funds case landed in the Porto TIC inside the last twelve months. Expect more coordinated operations to file in that jurisdiction as the Guarda DIC and UNCC build casework around fictitious-company schemes.