How corrupt are the police in Portugal? Do I need to bribe the police in Portugal?

I am very happy to answer this question because the police in Portugal are not corrupt at all. There is no corruption on that level in Portugal. I would highly recommend that people do not try any Latin American or African tricks of trying to slip in dollar notes into a driver’s license or any funny business like that because that doesn’t work in Europe. That is completely frowned upon and you could well be arrested if you do something like that. If you are coming to...

I am very happy to answer this question because the police in Portugal are not corrupt at all. There is no corruption on that level in Portugal. I would highly recommend that people do not try any Latin American or African tricks of trying to slip in dollar notes into a driver’s license or any funny business like that because that doesn’t work in Europe. That is completely frowned upon and you could well be arrested if you do something like that. If you are coming to Portugal, don’t try it. No one expects for corruption to happen at that level. 

 

Unfortunately, however, there is still some corruption that happens at other levels. For example, you may find relative to obtaining planning permission for certain projects, you sometimes wonder how certain properties were built. They may be too large or too close to a natural reserve so it is questionable how they managed to build there and so there might be some corruption that happened at the political level. There is still some suspicion of corruption in those areas around Portugal but it is not by any means commonplace nor is it of the kind of level that you would find in Africa or Latin America. Having lived in both Africa and Latin America, I can comment based on my observation and comparison of these different regions. There is a huge difference.

 

(São Gonçalo church, Porto, Portugal, pictured.)