Public Ministry claims lack of time to analyze evidence: detainees in the ‘Chimarrão case’ were released

The three detained in the case of computer fraud in the Chimarrão group were free this Friday from the Central Criminal Instruction Court (TCIC), after the Public Ministry (MP) admitted that they needed “more time to analyze evidence”, said a judicial source. As the same source told Lusa, the MP considered that a more in-depth analysis of the evidence collected against the three suspects detained on Wednesday and who were presented to the judge for the first interrogation was necessary, opting not to promote coercive measures.

Faced with this situation, the investigating judge Nuno Dias Costa decided to release the three suspects, being able, “perhaps, if necessary, to notify the defendants later” to provide statements in this investigation. cybercrime and economic-financial crime that resulted in the appropriation of around 40 million euros from the founders of the restoration group. The information on the release of the three detained by the Judiciary Police (PJ) in the operation called “Assinatura d’Ouro” was released this afternoon by CNN Portugal.

The PJ operation triggered searches in Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto, executing 25 home and non-home search warrants, with around 150 PJ operatives involved, mobilizing several units of this police, namely financial and accounting expertise and IT expertise.

The three detainees were later joined by a fourth, all Portuguese, aged between 25 and 45 years old. They are considered suspects in the crimes of illegitimate access and computer sabotage, computer fraud, document forgery and money laundering. The PJ explained that the suspects took advantage of the “vulnerable situation of the victims”, gradually taking control of the group’s companies and embezzling “assets valued at tens of millions of euros”.

The operation took place within the scope of an ongoing investigation at the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DIAP) in Lisbon and enabled the collection of documentary and digital evidence, as well as the seizure of properties, luxury vehicles, bank accounts and shares in companies.

Vulnerability and family abandonment facilitated €40 million fraud

The alert for the fraudulent scheme only emerged at the beginning of 2022, when the founder Cassiano Castro died, and the heirs realized that a large part of the assets had been transferred from the personal sphere of the owners of the Chimarrão group to third parties, making it impossible for the heirs to access a large part of the assets and assume the management and administration of the group.

This is because over the course of practically a decade, explained José Ribeiro, the suspects, taking advantage of the victims’ vulnerable situation, due to their weakened health, advanced age and family abandonment, were building a relationship emotional proximity to the businesspeople, starting from a position as administrative employees of the group until becoming caregivers of the founding couple, which allowed them to fraudulently appropriate assets, according to the PJ thesis.

This care and personal support provided to the couple was initially rewarded with the transfer of small corporate positions in the group that owns restaurants such as Chimarrão, Churrasqueira do Campo Grande, Café In, Mexicana or Leão de Gold, which the four suspects then continued by resorting to forging documents and signatures.

“Our suspicions, our thesis, is that although the group’s owners may have passed on some small shares as a reward for monitoring a few years ago, the fact is that the The couple lost their health, lost their ability to evaluate, and we think that many documents were falsified without the knowledge of the owners of Chimarrão (…). depend on registration, obviously there was a need to have help from (…) for example lawyers, solicitors”, explained José Ribeiro, criminal investigation coordinator at the National Unit to Combat Cybercrime and Technological Crime .

When they realized the alleged fraud, with the death of Cassiano Castro in early 2022, the family filed a complaint, “because the suspicions were very strong regarding the veracity of the documents presented to justify the transfer of assets”, explained the PJ coordinator, who believes that it will be possible to revert ownership of part of the assets back to the family sphere.

Total value of fraud may be higher

At stake are bank balances, urban and rural properties and luxury goods, such as cars worth hundreds of thousands of euros and jewelry and corporate shares, which grant business control, an asset that José Ribeiro classified as “inconsistent with the documents presented by these suspects over the years”.

The death of Cassiano Castro also marks the moment when the four suspects committed computer crimes to maintain control of the group, accessing the system that they already controlled remotely and which was used by the group’s various companies to sabotage it. and prevent access by third parties and even the collection of evidence by the police.

The approximately 40 million euros of damage to the victims and their heirs estimated by the PJ is a figure that has not been finalized, as information is still being collected, but according to the police, only the recent sale of the restaurant Leão de Ouro, in downtown Lisbon, reportedly yielded 12 million euros to the suspects.

Money laundering crimes relate to activities to try to conceal the transfer of assets, which the suspects were unable to complete in full over a decade, particularly with regard to corporate shares. laugh.

The concealment of the transfer of assets was done through the creation of companies and bank accounts in third countries of the European Union.