Portugal’s Judicial Police (PJ) has arrested a 58-year-old lawyer suspected of siphoning an estimated €1.2 million (approximately US$1.4 million) from the bank accounts of foreign clients who had retained him for golden visa applications.
Officers from the force’s National Anti-Corruption Unit detained the suspect on Wednesday, July 15, in Odivelas, on the northern outskirts of Lisbon.
According to the PJ’s statement, the lawyer, 58, obtained access to “numerous bank accounts held by clients of foreign nationality” on the pretext that this would expedite their applications for Authorization of Residence for Investment (ARI), the formal designation of the Portugal Golden Visa.
Between 2023 and March 2026, he allegedly transferred funds from those accounts into his own.
Investigators put the misappropriated total at up to €1.2 million, though the final figure remains under assessment. Whatever the ultimate sum, the PJ says it was “entirely dissipated on personal expenses.”
The inquiry, directed by Lisbon’s Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DIAP), has so far identified 33 victims, all foreign nationals. Police expect that count to grow as the case proceeds.
Authorities have not released the suspect’s name or the victims’ nationalities. He faces preliminary charges of aggravated fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering, and was due before a judge on Thursday, July 16, for a first judicial interrogation to determine coercive measures.
“There Is Absolutely No Need”
Madalena Monteiro, lawyer and founder of Lisbon-based Liberty Legal, says the case hinged on a mandate no golden visa applicant ever needs to grant. “The golden visa process does not require that the client provide any powers related to their bank account to anyone,” she tells IMI, “because all the operations can be done remotely by the investor.”
Under the standard procedure, she explains, investors follow one of two routes: either they transfer the investment amount directly to the fund from abroad, or they open a Portuguese bank account in their own name and wire the amount to the fund from there. Neither path involves ceding control of an account to an intermediary.
On whether the 33 victims stand any chance of clawing back their money through the courts, Monteiro says it will depend on whether the lawyer holds seizable assets. “If not, it’s going to be impossible.”
The PJ’s own finding does not inspire optimism on that front: police believe the full amount has already been spent. Unless the investigation uncovers hidden assets or property acquired with the diverted funds, civil recovery may yield little.
Prior Cases
The case carries an echo of some of the program’s earliest scandals. In 2017, Lisbon lawyer Maria Antónia Cameira was arrested on suspicion of defrauding golden visa applicants from China, South Africa, and Brazil of at least €6 million. She had persuaded clients to wire her money for property purchases that never took place.
More recently, in December 2025, Portuguese authorities and insolvency practitioners uncovered an alleged €37 million Ponzi structure built around a hotel development in the Algarve town of Lagos marketed to golden visa investors.
None of the three cases seems to point to a defect in the program’s legal architecture. What they share is investors ceding money, or control over money, to intermediaries rather than transacting through accounts and vehicles that only they themselves control. As Monteiro asserts, the compliant path never requires it.
