Rui Afonso, Chega deputy
“Amounts involved will range between 3,500 and 3,800 euros”: district leader of the party in Porto Rui Afonso “signed up dozens of members [do 1143] in the party, he paid them months of fees and money to go and vote.” He wasn’t the only one.
A defendant in case 1143 accused Deputy Chega Rui Afonso of buying votes from members of the neo-Nazi group, dismantled on January 20 by the Judiciary Police (PJ), this Sunday.
Tirso Fariacoordinator of the Santo Tirso nucleus of the neo-Nazi organization, told the newspaper that Rui Afonso “signed up dozens of members [do 1143] in the party, he paid them months of fees and amounts to go and vote”.
“As far as I know, the values involved will be between 3,500 and 3,800 euros“, added Tirso Faria, Chega activist and former vice-president of the party’s council in Santo Tirso.
The leadership led by Rui Afonso won the internal elections for the Chega district in Porto in September 2023, but without disclosing the total number of voters, recalled the morning newspaper.
“Rui Afonso did not give money to 1143 as an organization”, says, however, Tirso Faria, “but he registered dozens of members in the party, paid them months of fees and amounts to go and vote”. And the defendant says that Afonso “did the same thing with people from the Super Dragons [claque que apoia o FC Porto]but this part is controlled by other managers”.
“More than a hundred members of this group entered [o 1143] and other groups and heard about payments above 3,500 euros“, Artur Carvalho, former deputy to Rui Afonso in the Chega district in Porto, told the daily.
“In a meeting, we questioned him, but he laughed and passed on. I never accessed the database. All relevant information is in the possession of the trio Rui Afonso, Marcus Santos [vice-presidente e deputado] and Nuno Pontes [“vice”]”, tells the former director to Público.
Artur Carvalho left the party on November 28: “It took me a while to leave, because I and others wanted to continue questioning, trying to solve problems and prevent others, but there were many skills”.
“Racial war”
On January 20, the PJ involved 37 people in the “Irmandade” operation and 15 were accused, on suspicion of committing crimes of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence, aggravated threats and coercion, qualified physical harm and possession of a prohibited weapon.
The Public Ministry alleges that 1143 was preparing to have a paramilitary nature in anticipation of a possible and organizing, for 2026, two actions insulting the Prophet Muhammad to provoke negative or even violent reactions from the Muslim community in Portugal.
The group would be led by Mario Machadoincluding from prison, where he has been serving a sentence since May 2025 in another case, for discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence.
On January 24, the Central Criminal Instruction Court decided that five of the 37 alleged members of 1143 will await the investigation in pre-trial detention. The remaining 32 defendants were released29 of whom were required to report to the police station weekly, and three only with an identity and residence permit, the court said in a statement.
On February 4, the lawyer António Garcia Pereira invoked Chega’s connections to the neo-Nazi group 1143 and the sentence for the removal of André Ventura’s posters against gypsies to reinforce the request for the party’s extinction.
At the end of October 2025, Garcia Pereira filed a complaint addressed to the Attorney General of the Republic so that the Public Ministry activates legal mechanisms to , considering that the party violates the Constitution. In the new request sent to the Public Ministry, consulted by Lusa, Garcia Pereira once again defends the extinction of Chega due to its “evident, successively reaffirmed and reinforced, racist and fascist nature”.
