Lawyer Paulo Topa among 69 accused of insolvency fraud

O Prosecutor (MP) accused 69 defendants, including attorney Paulo Topa, judicial administrators, companies and companies, of criminal association, corruption, fraud and falsification of documents, economic crimes allegedly committed in insolvency proceedings and recovery of companies.

According to the charge of the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) Regional of Porto, to which the agency Lusa had access today, among the defendants are eight more lawyers, three judicial administrators, several entrepreneurs, an architect, a teacher, a notary, a solicitor, a physiotherapist and two pharmacy technicians.

Among the 69 defendants are also 24 companies and companies, linked to various sectors, such as real estate and automobile, as well as the Sociedade Hípica Quinta do Outeiral, in Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto district.

The prosecution says that, at least since mid 2023, the defendants “created an organized and stable group, with division of tasks among all, in order to, by associating with each other, obtain goods and money to which they were not entitled, namely, but not only, using insolvency proceedings to appropriate illegitimately for themselves and for third parties of high equity amounts, harming other people”.

For the MP, the defendants Paulo Topa and António Dias Seabra, judicial administrator, “created and led the criminal group, giving instructions to the other defendants”.

“ The group included several lawyers, legal administrators, a notary, ‘iron tests’, customer collectors, as well as several companies controlled by the group in order to essentially appear as creditors to deceive the judiciary and thus divert assets from companies and individuals,” the prosecution said.

The MP argues that “the purpose of the defendants was to obtain money, goods and all kinds of economic advantages to which they had no right for themselves and for third parties”, speaking in several million euros.

“ To this end, the defendants have developed and implemented over several years a strategy of procedural fraud, i.e. a complex scheme that involves the introduction of legal proceedings and the use of these procedures as a means of obtaining undue economic advantages, instrumentalizing the judicial system itself and manipulating the judicial process itself as a means of committing frauds”, the prosecution explains.

According to the MP, the defendants plotted a criminal plan that went “by obtaining illicit economic advantages through lawful acts of the courts themselves”.

“ The defendants take advantage of the fact that Paulo Topa and other defendants are entitled to practice the advocacy and the fact that António Dias Seabra, Joaquim Ribeiro and António Coimbra Rodrigues are entitled to perform the functions of judicial administrators, using the powers characteristic of these professions in violation of their professional duties, in order to manipulate the sense of judicial activity ", says the MP.

The ultimate goal would be to “get judicial decisions that, despite normally applying the facts to the law, were encumbered by the prior activity of the defendants, who cunningly provoked in the mind of the judge a false representation of the factual reality.”.

Paulo Topa and the court administrators are in custody.