Minister of Justice defends “certain renewal” in management positions in the PJ

A minister of Justice said today in parliament that it seems “very well” to have “a certain renewal in management positions”, regarding the removal of the financial director of the Judicial Police, involved in the case of the trailer operation Pacoba.

At the hearing regarding the government's proposal for the State Budget for 2027 (OE2027), Vanessa Barata, do Cávez, questioned the Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, whether the non-renewal of Álvaro Pires on the service committee as financial director of the Judicial Police (PJ) was already the result of the internal audit of the criminal police requested following the polemics involving the mandates of the former national director Luis Neves.

“Dr. Álvaro Pires’ commission of service was ending and the national director [Carlos Cabreiro] understood that it was not to renew this commission, he had been on this commission for eight years, so it seems to me very well that there is a certain renewal in management positions,” the minister replied.

Rita Alarcão Júdice also pointed out that she hopes to have the conclusions of this internal audit at the PJ by the end of November and reiterated that the other audit under way, carried out by the General Inspection of Justice Services (IGSJ) will be completed by the end of the year, having at this time four auditors exclusively in this process.

The Judiciary Police (JP) announced today that the service committees of the directors of Financial and Corporate Management and Innovation and Development were not renewed.

The information was released after RTP reported the departure of PJ's financial director, Álvaro Pires, who will be involved in the case of the trailer seized in a drug trafficking process and who was found in the custody of the company Construbarcelos, who did works in the home of the Minister of the Internal Administration.

This information had already been confirmed to the newspaper Observador by himself, who said he was unaware of the reasons for the non-renewal: “I had knowledge, but the reasons were not given to me. They said it was not appropriate to renew the service commission.”.

According to RTP, Álvaro Pires asked in the meantime not to continue in office and it was also Álvaro Pires who gave the current national director, Carlos Cabreiro, wrong information about the cost of destroying the material seized by PJ in the operation.

Following the various polemics involving the former National Director of the Judiciary Police and now Minister of Internal Administration, Luís Neves, MJ announced on August 6 audits to PJ, one of them internal, requested by the current director Carlos Cabreiro, and another, in parallel, to IGSJ, entity that regularly audits the Justice bodies.

In July, the newspaper Nascer do Sol reported the suspicions of irregularities in private works on a minister's property in Odemira, particularly as regards the construction of a swimming pool, made by a contractor friend of Neves and who for 17 times won contracts for works in PJ.

The following were news about the delivery to the same contractor, João Carvalho, owner of Construbarcelos, of a trailer seized by PJ in ‘Operation Pacoba’, against drug trafficking, being held by this contractor with drums with chemicals inside, which Luís Neves said were not destroyed due to the high cost that this entailed and that PJ had no money to behave.

The case of the trailer motivated the opening of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor, which is why the MJ excluded the opening of a investigation process in the context of the audit orders.