Tribunal Central de Instrução Criminal Sends Miguel Arruda and His Wife Ana Luísa to Trial Over the Lisbon Airport Luggage-Theft Case — Ex-Chega Deputy Faces 21 Counts of Qualified Theft, Wife Charged With Recetação for Wearing the Vinted Spoils

The Tribunal Central de Instrução Criminal at Campus da Justiça in Lisbon ruled on Friday 8 May 2026 that former Chega deputy Miguel Arruda and his wife Ana Luísa Arruda will both stand trial in the Aeroporto Humberto Delgado luggage-theft case — closing the instrução phase that the two arguidos had requested in different procedural postures and producing the first formal step toward a court date in what has become the most damaging single criminal file to land on a sitting Portuguese parliamentary group since the start of the legislature.

The Charges and the Modus Operandi

Miguel Arruda is accused of 21 counts of qualified theft — twenty consummated and one attempted — for systematically lifting other passengers' suitcases off the baggage carousels at Lisbon Airport during the period he commuted weekly between Ponta Delgada, where he resided, and Lisbon, where he worked as a deputy elected by the Açores constituency. The Ministério Público's reconstruction has him operating on at least eight days, mostly in the low-traffic non-Schengen arrival windows, photographing the contents on his phone, removing identifying tags, mixing the lifted bags into his own checked baggage, transferring the haul through ride-share vehicles back to a Lisbon flat and reselling clothing, footwear and luxury accessories on the Vinted peer-to-peer platform.

The full value of the contents was never fully tabulated — most of the suitcases the airline never recovered for forensic inventory — but two of the lifted bags carried roupa, calçado and luxury-brand handbags that the Polícia Judiciária valued at almost €12,000 combined, with one single suitcase containing approximately €5,500 of designer items.

Ana Luísa Arruda's Recetação Charge

Miguel Arruda's wife is charged with one count of recetação — receiving and using items she allegedly knew were stolen, after she was photographed wearing identifiable pieces from the lifted suitcases. Her defence team filed a request for instrução under Article 286 CPP arguing several formal nullities in the police searches at the family residence, particularly around chain-of-custody and consent procedures.

Judge Nuno Dias Costa rejected all three of those nullity arguments as totalmente infundados on Friday and confirmed her referral to trial alongside her husband.

What Comes Next

Miguel Arruda did not request the opening of instrução himself — the court therefore registered him as referred to trial directly out of the despacho de acusação, as is the procedural default. He has filed appeal against the rejection of his subsequent instrução petition. Legal observers note the appellate reversal of an instrução rejection at this stage of a criminal process is unusual, but the appeal will delay the marcação of the trial date by several months in any case.

The case removed Miguel Arruda from the Chega parliamentary bench in early 2025 — André Ventura ejected him from the parliamentary group within 48 hours of the first PJ leaks — and the seat reverted to the Açores list. The criminal file is being prosecuted under the qualified-theft framework rather than the more lenient furto simples because of the public-place aggravation and the airport-baggage-area context, which the Ministério Público read as falling under the local público qualifier of Article 204 CP.

What Foreign Residents Should Take From the Case

• If you fly into Lisbon: the Polícia Judiciária leveraged Lufthansa, TAP and Iberia tag data to reconstruct the carousel-by-carousel timeline; airport CCTV does work in Portugal, even if cases like this one took months to reach instrução.
• If a bag goes missing from Humberto Delgado: file the property irregularity report (PIR) immediately at the airline desk and lodge a parallel queixa with the PSP airport post within 48 hours. The PIR triggers the carrier insurance; the queixa triggers the criminal track that produced this case.
• If a Vinted listing matches your stolen items: the platform's compliance team responded to PJ subpoenas inside the legal window — that channel is active for Portuguese police.

The trial-readiness phase typically runs 60 to 90 days after the appeal is decided. A trial date in the second half of 2026 remains the most likely outcome, with the Tribunal de Lisboa as the venue.