Operation Prova Limpa: Quintanilha and PJ inspector on trial in October | OneFootball

An inspector from the Judicial Police (PJ) and Adriano Quintanilha, the former top official at W52-FC Porto, will begin trial in October for allegedly having devised a plan to prevent the businessman from being implicated in the cycling team’s doping scheme.

The information was given today to Lusa news agency by a judicial source, who added that the trial is set to begin at 10:00 on 7 October at the Felgueiras Court, in a single-judge trial, in the Porto district.

In September 2025, the Penafiel Criminal Investigation Court committed the defendants to trial, that is, decided to send them to trial exactly under the terms of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) indictment, after both had requested the opening of the pre-trial instruction phase.

The MP’s indictment, released by Lusa, states that Adriano Sousa, better known as Adriano Quintanilha, and the PJ inspector “decided to create” a fake Code of Conduct, with the aim of showing that Quintanilha and the Calvário Várzea Association, which gave rise to W52-FC Porto and of which he was president, were unaware of the doping scheme investigated in the Prova Limpa case.

That document was then handed to the cyclists and the team’s then sporting director, Nuno Ribeiro, to be signed, with the purpose of distancing Adriano Quintanilha and the Association “from the then alleged conduct of the team’s sporting director and its cyclists.”

The investigation stemmed from the searches carried out in April 2022 as part of Operation Prova Limpa.

“The defendant Adriano Sousa, alarmed by the criminal and disciplinary consequences that such conduct would entail for him and for the Association he represented, decided to devise a plan aimed at exempting both himself and the Association from any possible responsibility for the facts under investigation in that case,” the indictment states.

According to the MP, the 73-year-old businessman then contacted “his friend, whom he knew to be an inspector of the Judicial Police, working at the Northern Directorate, and whom he knew shared with him the same attachment to the W52-FC Porto team and to cycling.”

The 57-year-old PJ inspector, “aware of what the defendant wanted, decided to create and carry out, together with him, a plan that would make it possible to achieve the ends sought” by his friend.

In that context, the two defendants “decided to create a document intended to certify that Adriano Quintanilha and the Association ‘were unaware of the practices under investigation’ in the Prova Limpa case ‘and that therefore no criminal, administrative-offence or disciplinary liability could be attributed to them.’”

Thus, “in carrying out the plan they had devised and with the aim of reducing the negative repercussions of the existence of the case” for the association and for Adriano Quintanilha, the two defendants “decided to create a Code of Conduct dated prior to April 2022,” the month in which the searches and seizures of Operation Prova Limpa took place.

“The two defendants also decided that this document would include, in particular, clauses whose content would certify that any conduct by the sporting director and the cyclists that violated anti-doping rules had taken place behind the Association’s back, against its instructions, and with its total lack of knowledge and, consequently, that of its president, the defendant Adriano Sousa,” the MP argues.

In possession of the document, dated January 2022, the two defendants, “always acting with a unity of intent, decided to hand it to the sporting director, Nuno Ribeiro, and to the team’s cyclists, particularly those who had been targeted in the searches, so that they would sign it, while fully aware that the date placed on the document did not correspond to the date on which that document was drawn up and signed.”

According to the MP, to convince Nuno Ribeiro and the cyclists to sign the document, Adriano Quintanilha claimed that “they would be protecting the cycling team, their participation as W52-FC Porto riders, and their work.”

The indictment also states that one of the cyclists only signed the document because Quintanilha threatened that he would not receive his salary.

Calvário Várzea, Adriano Quintanilha and the PJ inspector have been charged with document forgery. Quintanilha also faces a coercion charge, while the inspector is likewise charged with aiding an offender.

In the main W52-FC Porto case, Adriano Quintanilha and Nuno Ribeiro were sentenced to effective prison terms of four years and nine months for the doping scheme, and both have appealed.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.