Lisbon, June 29, 2026 (Lusa) - A joint operation by the Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) and the Spanish Civil Guard has dismantled a human trafficking network involved in labour exploitation, arresting five people in Portugal and Spain and rescuing two men who had been exploited for decades.
According to a statement released on Monday by the PJ (the country's main criminal investigation agency), the two rescued men were freed from the situation of labour exploitation in which they found themselves during the initial phase of Operation ‘Mãos Livres’, in March 2025, at which point the victims had been “under the control of the suspects for 30 and 15 years”, with the older victim having been “even traded amongst members of the group, as if he were a commodity”.
The five arrests – three in Spain, under European arrest warrants issued in conjunction with EUROJUST, and two in Portugal – took place on 23 June and today.
The three individuals arrested in Spain, aged between 32 and 35, appeared before the National Court in Madrid for extradition to Portugal, whilst the two arrested in Portugal, aged 54 and 56 – “one of whom has a criminal record for offences of a similar nature” – are yet to appear in court for the imposition of coercive measures.
“Operation ‘Mãos Livres’, carried out in two phases in the Burgos area of Spain, targeted a family-run group which, in a concerted manner over several years, had been recruiting vulnerable people in Portugal who were in financial need and facing social exclusion,” the PJ explained in a statement.
According to the PJ, the modus operandi of the now-dismantled family-run human trafficking network involved acting as intermediaries to supply labour to employers in Spain for low-skilled agricultural work.
The suspects kept “the victims under their control, living in appalling accommodation and poor nutrition, under constant coercion, and retained almost all of the earnings they made by appropriating the money that employers gave them to pay their wages”.
“With no control over their lives, the victims were registered with the Spanish Social Security Services so that their exploiters could draw up employment contracts, thereby obtaining, in addition to their wages, benefits arising from social security payments; they opened bank accounts and registered vehicles in their names, a strategy that hampered the authorities’ efforts,” the PJ further explained.
The Portuguese police also stated that, during operations in Spain as part of the investigation led by the Department of Investigation and Criminal Prosecution (DIAP) in Coimbra, additional evidence was gathered and bank balances and two properties were seized.
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