Miguel Arruda was a secondary and vocal deputy of the Chega bench, the Portuguese far-right party, until Tuesday. Since then he has become the only politician who can boast of having eclipsed Donald Trump in the news and in memes on social networks in Portugal. That Tuesday several police officers were waiting for him at the Lisbon airport. They accompanied him to his apartment in the Portuguese capital, where they found a chaos of clothes, objects and suitcases. At the same time, other agents searched his 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 questioned due to his parliamentary immunity, but he was charged that same day by the Prosecutor’s Office, who accused him of stealing suitcases from the luggage carousels at Portela airport in Lisbon.
The press assures that the police have recordings where the deputy is seen in action thanks to the terminal’s video surveillance system. The mode of operation was simple. At the beginning of the week, Arruda traveled with a large, empty suitcase from the island of Azores, where he would later store some trolley smaller size that you would remove from one of the conveyor belts. In the first news about the case, it was stated that the deputy had acknowledged being the author of the robberies against the agents, but in his first interview he proclaimed himself innocent and stated that the recordings that implicate him may have been generated by artificial intelligence. . “If there is anyone who wants this to be clarified, it is me,” he said Thursday night on the TVI network. “They are putting me on trial in the public square,” he added.
The general astonishment over the theft of suitcases from a national parliamentarian even led some analysts to speculate whether it might be a mental disorder. A kleptomania like the actress Winona Ryder also suffered in the past. As the hours passed, however, new shocking details emerged. The used clothing sales platform Vinted had an operational account since May 2024, two months after the start of the legislature in which Arruda made his debut as a parliamentarian, from which more than 180 items had been sold at ridiculous prices: pants Benetton for one euro, Hugo Boss shirts for five, sneakers for 1.5 euros.
Some of the photographs of the garments on offer had been taken on suitcases. Furthermore, the account from which it was sold, miguelarruda84, coincided with the identity of the politician and the year of his birth. Minutes after public broadcaster RTP questioned Arruda about the matter on Thursday, the account was deleted. As the parliamentarian’s X account was also deleted early this Friday.
In his subsequent interview, the deputy evaded with some incoherence. First he said that he did not have any account at Vinted, then he clarified that perhaps his wife was dedicated to something like that. So far, the picturesque.
The case has been the main blow that Chega has suffered since he debuted in March 2024 as a powerful force in the Assembly of the Republic with 50 deputies. For a party that makes the fight against corruption and crime one of the reasons for its existence, the Arruda case It’s devastating. He is not the only representative of the extreme right involved in irregularities (nine other deputies are involved in different causes), but none of them have animated the political playground as much as the suitcase issue.
The matter caught André Ventura, the party leader, making short videos for networks where he showed his happiness in Washington, invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Ventura is fast and smart. He announced that he would meet with the Azores parliamentarian as soon as he returned to Lisbon to listen to his explanations. “Chega cannot allow itself to have situations equal to those of the PS or PSD,” he stated in reference to the cases that have affected the two majority parties at other times. None, of course, due to theft of traveling suitcases.
The streets of Portugal are full of giant posters where Ventura announces that he is going to clean up the country. The founder of Chega did not explain whether he had seen videos with his deputy in action, but he alluded to their existence. And if so, they are facts that undermine his permanent appeal to the iron fist against crime. Ventura attended the meeting with the aim of convincing him to resign the seat, but Arruda had already made the decision to abandon his membership in the party and maintain his record as a deputy in the non-attached group.
In the interview, the deputy gave a kind version of the meeting with the Chega leader. “It was a very frank conversation with the president of the party, I really liked it,” he said before emphasizing that it is “the party of my ideals.” However, in the ranks of Chega another atmosphere is drawn. In this morning’s session, when the president of the Assembly, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, announced Arruda’s transfer to those not affiliated and his new location, in the last row, sitting next to the extreme right deputies, the bench affected reacted with protests that forced the session to be temporarily suspended. “We are not comfortable with the fact that deputy Miguel Arruda sits next to the Chega deputies because, as you know, things were not smooth. “I cannot answer for my parliamentary group and for what may happen in this plenary session,” warned the parliamentary leader, Pedro Pinto.
Despite not being loved by his people, Arruda voted with them all morning. The only one who has come out in his defense is the president of Chega in the Azores, José Pacheco, although his support has been decreasing as the hours have passed. “He will only be replaced if he is convicted by a court,” he stressed on the first day. This Thursday he clarified that he would have preferred that he had resigned from the seat.
Noisy deputies abound in the radical caucus. Until now Miguel Arruda was one of the main sources of stridency. On social networks he has not hidden his sympathy for the less subtle extreme right. In more than two years in prison for having defended in a tweet “forced prostitution for the Bloco girls [de Esquerda]”. Arruda has resorted to the services of the same lawyer, José Manuel Castro, who defended Machado. His proclamations against immigrants, Freemasons and leftists were frequent. For a few hours now they can no longer be read because he deactivated the account, where he had posted something like this as the header tweet: “If you want to attack the socialists, call me.”
