Miguel Arruda was a secondary and loud deputy of the bench, until Tuesday. Since then it has become the only politician who can boast of having eclipsed Donald Trump in the news and memes on social networks in Portugal. That Tuesday, several police officers awaited him at Lisbon airport. He was accompanied to his apartment in the Portuguese capital, where they found chaos of clothes, objects and suitcases. At the same time, other agents registered their family home on the island of São Miguel (Azores), where he had worked as a technician in the waste collection company until he entered Parliament. Arruda was not arrested or interrogated due to his parliamentary immunity, but he was charged that same day by the Prosecutor’s Office, which accuses him of stealing suitcases in the luggage ribbons of Portela airport, in Lisbon.
The press ensures that the police have recordings where the deputy is seen in action thanks to the terminal video surveillance system. The way of operating was simple. At the beginning of the week, Arruda was traveling with a big and empty suitcase from the island of Azores, where he would then keep some tróley smaller that would withdraw from one of the conveyor belts. In the first news about the case, it was stated that the deputy had recognized being the author of the robberies to the agents, but has been proclaimed innocent and has stated that the recordings involved may have been generated by artificial intelligence. “If there is someone who wants this to clarify, it’s me,” he said Thursday night in the TVI chain. “They are making a trial in the public square,” he added.
The general stupefaction on the theft of suitcases of a parliamentarian of the nation even led some analysts to speculate if it would be a mental disorder. A kleptomania as also suffered in the past. With the passing of the hours, however, new abracadent details emerged. The Vind used clothing sales platform had an operational account since May 2024, two months after the start of the legislature in which he had premiered as a parliamentarian, from which more than 180 items had been sold at ridiculous prices: Benetton to one euro, Hugo Boss shirts to five, shoes for 1.5 euros.
Some of the photographs of the garments offered had been made on suitcases. In addition, the account from which it was sold, miguelarruda84, coincided with the identity of the politician and the year of his birth. Minutes after the RTP public chain interrogated the matter on Thursday, the account was eliminated. As the X account from the parliamentarian was also deleted early this Friday.
In his subsequent interview, the deputy evaded with some incoherence. First he said that he had no account in Vind, then clarified that maybe his wife dedicated himself to something like that. So far, the picturesque.
The case has been the main pedrada that Chega has suffered since it was released in March 2024 as. For a party that makes the fight against corruption and crime one of the reasons for its existence, the Arruda case It is devastating. He is not the only representative of the extreme right wrapped in irregularities (nine other deputies are involved in different causes), but none of them has encouraged both the political patio and the subject of the suitcases.
The matter caught André Ventura, the party leader, making short videos for networks where he showed his happiness in Washington, invited to the possession of Donald Trump. Ventura is fast and ready. He announced that he would meet with the Azores parliamentarian as soon as he returned to Lisbon to listen to his explanations. “Chega cannot afford to have situations equal to those of the PSD,” he said in reference to the cases that have splashed the two major parties at other times. None, of course, for the abduction of traveling suitcases.
The streets of Portugal are full of giant posters where Ventura announces that he will clean the country. He did not explain if he had seen videos with his deputy in action, but alluded to his existence. And if so they are facts that threaten their permanent appeal at the hand of iron against crime. Ventura went to the meeting with the aim of convincing him to renounce the seat, but Arruda had already made the decision to leave the militancy in the party and maintain his deputy act in the group of non -assigned.
In the interview, the deputy gave a friendly version of the meeting with the Chega leader. “It was a very frank conversation with the president of the party, I liked it a lot,” he said before stressing that it is “the game of my ideals.” However, another atmosphere is drawn in Chega’s ranks. In this morning’s session, when the president of the Assembly, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, announced Arruda’s pass to the non-attached and his new location, in the last row, sitting next to the deputies of the extreme right, the bench Affected reacted with protests that forced to temporarily suspend the session. “We do not feel comfortable with the fact that deputy Miguel Arrudo feels next to Chega’s deputies because, as they know, things were not soft. I cannot answer for my parliamentary group and for what may happen in this plenary session, ”said parliamentary leader Pedro Pinto.
Despite not being loved by his, Arruda voted with them all morning. The only one who has come out in his defense is the president of Chega in Azores, José Pacheco, although his support has been reduced with the passing of the hours. “It will only be replaced if it is convicted by a court,” he said the first day. This Thursday he clarified that he would have preferred that he had renounced the seat.
The noisy deputies abound in the radical bench. So far Miguel Arruda was one of the main sources of stridency. In social networks he has not disguised his sympathy for the least subtle right right. In X he praised, after his death for having “fought until the end” and called “political prisoner” to Mario Machado, a Portuguese neo -Nazi who turns more than two years in prison for having defended in a tweet “forced prostitution for the tipas of the bloco [de Esquerda]” Arruda has resorted to the services of the same lawyer, José Manuel Castro, who defended Machado. His proclamations against immigrants, masons and leftists were frequent. For a few hours you can not read because it has deactivated the account, where I had set something like this as a header: “If you want to stir the socialists, call me.”
