It was the SIS itself that suggested that João Galamba’s office also contact the criminal investigation bodies (Judicial Police) to report the case of the computer that had been stolen by Frederico Pinheiro, a former deputy of the ministry. The news was announced by the newspaper Expresso, this Friday, and discards the idea that the two entities have been contacted simultaneously – the SIS would have been involved several hours before the PJ.
Citing a judicial source, when Luís Neves, director of the Judiciary, was contacted by João Galamba himself, who told him what he described as the theft of a computer with classified information, the laptop had already been recovered by the SIS. This recovery was carried out by an SIS agent who contacted Frederico Pinheiro directly after 11:00 p.m. on April 26, minutes after the email he sent to the services expressing his availability to return the computer, as revealed by the Observer in exclusive.
Only the next morning, April 27, did the PJ inspectors go to the house of the former deputy – and they did not know that the laptop had already been in the hands of the SIS the night before. The Judiciary even seized the computer from CEGER, the entity that manages the government’s computer systems, to whom the SIS handed over the computer after a SIS agent convinced the former deputy from Galamba to hand over the equipment.
João Galamba said, in the press conference he offered last Saturday, that he had called both the SIS and the PJ. But he did not reveal that, in reality, the first had been alerted several hours before the second – which goes against what was said by various specialists who have been speaking out on the case and who maintain that the PJ should have been the body best suited to be contacted immediately in a case like this.
Speaking to the Observer, the lawyer Paulo Saragoça da Matta disagrees with the conclusions of the SIRP Supervisory Board and is categorical: “SIS could not have collected that computer because the law prevents it from carrying out this field work.”
“By the way,” he continues, “it is unequivocal” that such a step is “an act of the police.” This is because “no one would hand over a state PC to an ‘anonymous civilian’ on the street,” and “it is irrelevant whether Dr. Frederico Pinheiro handed over the computer voluntarily or not,” she argues.
For the criminal attorney, “someone from the SIS clearly assumed the powers of an authority and it was with that perception and in that assumption that Dr. Frederico Pinheiro certainly handed over the computer,” he says.
Source: Observadora
