Hélder Silva was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) and presented to the Public Prosecutor's Office after a report was broadcast by the television station SIC denouncing the alleged existence of 200 abandoned children with health problems in a shed on the outskirts of Luanda in an area known as Baixa de Kassange.
However, the case was later exposed as an attempt at fraud through an evangelical church in Olhão (Portugal) by two Angolan civil society activists, who accompanied Hélder Silva to neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Luanda, where four minors in need of health care were rescued.
The young man said, however, that he staged the story from filming children who were in various locations.
According to the PGR, Hélder Silva was heard in a statement of interrogation and was charged with remanding him in custody as a coercive measure.
Although the case is still "at an embryonic stage", the OPG admits resorting to judicial cooperation agreements in criminal matters with Portugal, under the CPLP, or other protocols with its Portuguese counterpart.
Hélder Silva spoke to the Angolan Public Television on 4 August where he assumed he had lied and declared he was sorry, asking "sincere apologies to society and to all those who felt hurt and wounded" for what had happened.
