On its official website, the prosecutor's office said that the defendants, within the scope of their professional activity, took advantage of the vulnerabilities in the mechanism for regularising illegal immigrants, in particular the fact that Brazilian citizens were exempt from the need to have a visa to enter the country and that the expression of interest would have to be carried out 180 days later in Portugal. The lawyers are then accused of putting together a plan for the regularisation of foreigners of different nationalities (Indian, Pakistani, Moroccan, Algerian and Filipino) which involved inserting expressions of interest on the SAPA portal interest of these citizens by falsely declaring that they had Brazilian nationality.

“Through these conducts, the defendants managed to circumvent the obligation for citizens to specify their respective visa for entry into national territory or the Schengen area, allowing them to remain irregularly in Portugal, obstructing the procedure of the (extinct) Foreigners and Borders Service regarding their coercive removal from the national territory and the automatic negative opinion of the (extinct) SEF”.

In this sequence, between October 2007 and October 2018, the defendants filled out at least 44 expressions of interest falsely stating that the citizens had Brazilian nationality and that they had entered and remained in Portugal for at least 180 days, the prosecutor's office said.

The lawyers filled out these declarations for amounts starting at 50 euros, he highlighted.

The MP considered that, with this practice, the suspects would have obtained 8,800 euros.