The Public Prosecutor’s Office has charged 43 people and one company with undue withdrawal of the social mobility subsidy at CTT counters, through the forgery of airline tickets between Madeira and Lisbon.
According to the statement from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) released on Monday, prosecutors from the Department of Investigation and Criminal Prosecution (DIAP) in Loures filed charges against 44 defendants for the crimes of criminal association, qualified fraud, money laundering, computer fraud and document forgery.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, this “criminal organization” will have recruited dozens of people in Madeira who, between 2015 and 2024, traveled to mainland Portugal, “to go to stores and CTT offices located throughout the national territory”.
The purpose of the trips was to collect the social mobility subsidy, which is granted to those who travel to and from the islands of Madeira and the Azores, through CTT counters. And in order to make the withdrawals, this group falsified airline tickets, reservations, invoices and receipts associated with the trips.
During the investigation, which was assisted by the Judicial Police, it was possible to determine losses to the Portuguese State of at least 529 thousand euros.
Related to this process, the Judicial Police arrested, in May last year, five people carried out more than 70 searches in the Autonomous Region of Madeira and the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon.
Regarding the arrests, the Judicial Police explained that the group under investigation “demonstrated high levels of organization, with different hierarchical levels, and was made up of counterfeiters, recruiters, fundraisers and controllers”.
The police also indicated that in recent years several operations have been carried out to dismantle “criminal networks dedicated to the fraudulent use of the social mobility subsidy” in Madeira and the Azores, which have already defrauded the State of more than six million euros.