A Portuguese national suspected of international trafficking in Brazilian children is in preventive detention, the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) confirmed to Lusa, which is “acting quickly” to find the newborn, who will be in the city of Porto.
“The possibility that this Portuguese man is actually the father of these children has been ruled out. He actually made a false registration in the registry office,” the coordinator of the PF group for the suppression of crimes against human rights in Campinas said at a press conference. , Estela Berake Costa.
Brazilian authorities are in contact with Portuguese authorities and are “acting quickly” to search for “the child who may be in the Portuguese city of Porto,” a Brazilian Federal Police spokesman said.
The investigation began on November 30 after Brazilian prosecutors said that a newborn baby in the city of Valinhos, Sao Paulo state, who is still in the Santa Casa de Valinhos hospital, was abandoned by its mother. and is registered as the son of a man of Portuguese nationality.
Less than a month later, the same man registered another newborn at the same hospital as his daughter, who was allegedly in Portugal.
The Portuguese made four trips between Brazil and Portugal in 2015, 2021 and 2023, two of them this year.
“It was on his last departure from the country, on October 24, 2023, that the investigator took a newborn child, less than a month old, to Portugal, and has now returned to Brazil without her, possibly to look for this other child,” the Brazilian Federal Police said.
Estela Beraque Costa said in detail that the Portuguese, during interrogation this Monday, said that he would like to leave the children whom he wanted to adopt in Portugal, but was unable to do so, and therefore “was looking for another way.”
“This is not adoption, this is international trafficking in children,” the PF representative emphasized, clarifying that the mothers have not yet been found, but one of them comes from Para (a state in northern Brazil), and the other from the city of San. Paulo.
The Portuguese national used false documents to establish the paternity of the newborns, the PF said, adding that the intermediary, the mothers and the mothers’ lawyers were still under investigation, “who filed unilateral guardianship” to allow the Portuguese national to go out with the children.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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