PJ inspector and Adriano Quintanilha stand trial in W52-FC Porto case | OneFootball

A Judicial Police (PJ) inspector and Adriano Quintanilha, the former head of W52-FC Porto, will begin trial in October for allegedly devising a plan to prevent the businessman from being implicated in the cycling team’s doping scheme.

The hearing is scheduled for 7 October at 10 a.m. at Felgueiras Court, in the Porto district.

According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office indictment, Adriano Sousa, known as Adriano Quintanilha, and the PJ inspector “decided to create” a false Code of Conduct in order to show that the cycling team’s official and the Calvário Várzea Association, which was behind the creation of W52-FC Porto and of which Quintanilha was president, were unaware of the doping scheme investigated in the Prova Limpa case.

The document was later allegedly given to the cyclists and to the team’s then director, Nuno Ribeiro, so that they would sign it, with the intention of distancing Adriano Quintanilha and the Association “from the then alleged conduct of the team’s sporting director and its cyclists.”

“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 himself and the Association from any possible responsibility for the facts under investigation in that case,” the indictment states.

According to the prosecution, the businessman contacted “his friend, whom he knew to be a Judicial Police inspector working at the Northern Directorate and whom he knew shared with him the same attachment to the W52-FC Porto team and to cycling.”

As for the inspector, the Public Prosecutor’s Office argues that he, “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 aims sought” by his friend.

To that end, the 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 or disciplinary liability could be imputed to them.”

Thus, “in implementing the plan they had devised and with the purpose 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 searches and seizures took place as part of Operation Prova Limpa.

“The two defendants also decided that the document would include, in particular, clauses whose content would certify that any conduct by the sporting director and the cyclists in breach of anti-doping rules had been carried out behind the Association’s back, contrary to its instructions and without its knowledge and, consequently, without the knowledge of its president, the defendant Adriano Sousa,” the prosecution adds.

According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Adriano Quintanilha allegedly told Nuno Ribeiro and the cyclists, in order to persuade them to sign the document, that “they would be protecting the cycling team, their participation as W52-FC Porto cyclists and their work.”

The indictment also adds that one of the cyclists signed the document after being threatened by Adriano Quintanilha that he would not receive his salary.

Calvário Várzea, Adriano Quintanilha and the PJ inspector are charged with document forgery. The businessman, 73, is also charged with coercion, while the inspector is additionally 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 the decision.

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