The two employees of a family health unit (USF) detained by the Judiciary Police (PJ), as part of the investigation into an illegal immigration network, were suspended from office and will await trial in freedomsaid a police source.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, a source from the PJ Center Directorate explained that the two women, aged 40 and 54, were heard by a judge at the Central Criminal Investigation Court, in Lisbon, and were ordered to suspend their duties at the USF in a town in the municipality of Ovar, district of Aveiro.
The suspects also provided an identity and residence agreement and will await the progress of the process in freedom, although prohibited from contacting each other and the remaining defendants in the case.the “Gambéria” operation, which led to the dismantling of an organized criminal group suspected of repeatedly committing crimes of aiding illegal immigration in Portugal.
In information provided on Wednesday, the Directorate of the PJ Center, which is leading the investigation, highlighted that the two administrative employees had carried out, in exchange for financial advantages, around 10,000 fraudulent registrations of immigrants in the National Health Service (SNS), over the course of a year and a half.
The Judicial Police investigation also discovered that almost 500 people gave the same address on a street in Lisbon, situations that were not detected by the Ministry of Health’s systems.
The source emphasized that in the process of legalizing immigrants, the phase of assigning the national SNS user number occurs at the end and “is one of the most difficult, the icing on the cake, in quotes”, he declared.
Operation “Gambéria”, which began in September 2023, is in its final phase and “achieved the objectives it intended”, he argued.
In the three phases of the operation already carried out, the first of which was in May and the last announced on Wednesday, 16 people were arrested (including seven businessmen, a lawyer and an employee of the Directorate-General for Consular Affairs and Portuguese Communities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), with another 26 people being accused.
The source from the PJ Center’s board of directors also said, without specifying numbers, that a lot of money, properties and vehicles were seized, and bank transactions amounting to large millions of euros were detected.