A senior Polícia Judiciária official has taken responsibility for the decision to place a trailer containing seized chemicals during a drugs operation in the temporary custody of a private contractor – weakening allegations that Interior Minister Luís Neves personally arranged the transfer while serving as national director of the force.
Álvaro Pires, the PJ’s director of finance and assets and the official responsible for managing seized property, has reportedly said internally that the proposal originated with him.
According to CNN Portugal, Pires considered the arrangement the best temporary solution available to the State in September 2025. It was subsequently approved by Neves after other options had been exhausted.
As previous stories on this July ‘controversy’ have mentioned, the Maritime Authority had ordered the trailer to be removed immediately from its premises in Seixal because the chemical drums inside presented a fire risk. The PJ’s seized-assets facility in Tires was already full, while the only estimate obtained for destroying the chemicals amounted to €144,000 — money the force did not have available.
The trailer was consequently placed in the custody of building contractor João Carvalho at a Construbarcelos warehouse in Barcelos. Carvalho’s relationship with Neves subsequently fuelled allegations of favouritism and improper handling of material seized during a drug-trafficking investigation. But, bit by bit, these allegations appear to be starting to lack the necessary back-up.
The trailer was recovered by the PJ mid-July and returned to the Lisbon area. In a detail illustrating the storage problem behind the original decision, it is now reportedly parked outside the PJ warehouse in Tires because there is still no room for it inside.
The facility is said to contain numerous seized items, including wreckage from the Glória funicular crash.
A document obtained by CNN Portugal has also substantially undermined claims that transferring the chemicals breached the chain of custody in the criminal investigation.
The chemicals were seized on December 4, 2024, during the PJ’s Operation Pacoba against drug trafficking. Two days later, the public prosecutor leading the investigation at the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action, DCIAP, ordered their destruction.
“I order the destruction of all seized chemical materials and waste, pursuant to Article 185(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Notify the PJ,” the prosecutor wrote.
The order indicates that the chemicals were no longer evidence requiring preservation for trial. It also weakens suggestions from lawyers representing Operation Pacoba defendants that the controversy could provide grounds for challenging the proceedings.
After receiving the destruction order, the PJ unit overseen by Pires sought quotations from specialist companies. It received an estimate of €144,000, but lacked the budget to proceed.
The emerging account does not remove every question surrounding the decision to entrust potentially hazardous chemicals to a private contractor, particularly one known to Neves. Nor does it explain why a more formal State solution was apparently unavailable for nine months. It does, however, materially alter the picture presented over recent days. The initiative is now said to have come from the official directly responsible for seized assets; Neves’s role was to approve it; and the public prosecutor had already ordered the chemicals destroyed, contradicting the central allegation that criminal evidence had been improperly removed from official custody.
Socialists accuse government of shielding Interior minister from parliament
Despite new evidence weakening allegations against Luís Neves, Portugal’s Socialist Party has accused the governing PSD and CDS-PP coalition of building a “wall” around the Interior Minister after an opposition attempt to summon him before parliament failed for lack of political consensus.
PS parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias said the governing parties had made a “serious political mistake” by preventing an extraordinary meeting of parliament’s Standing Committee – where Neves would have been questioned over controversies dating from his leadership of the Polícia Judiciária.
The request was submitted by Iniciativa Liberal, but parliamentary speaker José Pedro Aguiar-Branco rejected it after party leaders failed to reach the consensus required to convene the committee during the summer parliamentary recess.
Only IL formally supported the request. The remaining parties either opposed it or said they would not object, without explicitly endorsing the hearing.
Brilhante Dias insists the PS had sought to make the meeting possible by consensus, and denies that the party has played down the affair.
“It is a serious political mistake by the PSD and CDS, by the AD, to create obstacles to clarification at a time when that clarification is very necessary,” he told Lusa.
His criticism comes in spite of the new information that appears to weaken some of the most serious allegations that have been swirling over the last two-plus weeks.
Brilhante Dias said Socialist leader José Luís Carneiro will nonetheless be seeking a meeting with Prime Minister Luís Montenegro if Neves fails to give the explanations that he has promised. That meeting would be “a decisive moment” in establishing the PS position, he said. But the party has stopped short of demanding Neves’s resignation.
“We do not want to speak about the minister’s dismissal, but what is at stake is citizens’ confidence in the government and the institutions,” said Brilhante Dias, adding that “anyone who is not available to provide clarification is not fit to hold public office.”
All in all, after days in which Luís Neves’ position was looking untenable, things appear to be changing, potentially for the better for him.
Prime minister Luís Montenegro has insisted that he is not even considering replacing Neves, who he continues to describe as “a very competent minister”.
Sources: CNN Portugal/ LUSA/ Observador
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