“We are aware that artificial intelligence can be a valuable ally in criminal investigation, procedural management, and identifying patterns in large volumes of data,” said Amadeu Guerra at the opening session of the XXII Meeting of the Attorneys General of the CPLP, themed “economic and financial crime in the age of artificial intelligence — digital evidence and asset recovery.”
“The adoption of this technology must be accompanied by rigorous guarantees, ensuring that decisions maintain impartiality and respect the fundamental rights of the criminal process and data protection,” he stated.
For the host Attorney General, “justice is experiencing demanding times. We cannot respond to increasingly organized and transnational crime with disorganization and disarticulation, nor with an exclusively local vision.”
Amadeu Guerra believes that “legal and judicial cooperation, as well as all forms of formal and informal communication and exchange of experiences among Public Ministries, are essential tools for fulfilling these functions and particularly for the common objective of combating complex and transnational criminal phenomena, especially economic-financial crime, corruption, organized and violent crime.”
He further mentioned that this cooperation “faces new challenges today requiring a joint effort oriented towards combining the work of magistrates and prosecutors from different jurisdictions and countries to tackle complex, cross-border, and multidisciplinary crime, which demands the combination of all available knowledge.”
Referring to digital evidence, he noted that the large amount of material collected and data seized “requires investment in new research tools, in having modern and well-equipped forensic laboratories capable of ensuring greater efficacy and speed of investigation and a better justice system.”
On this topic, the Portuguese Minister of Justice, who also attended the opening session, remarked that “digital evidence also assumes a critically decisive role” in combating crime.
“All human activity, legitimate or criminal, leaves traces, and today, almost all traces leave a digital mark. Therefore, the admissibility and reliability of digital evidence will increasingly be determining factors for the success of criminal proceedings,” stated Rita Júdice.
The minister recalled the government’s intention to “promote the creation of digital mechanisms of exchange and information among judicial authorities, criminal police bodies, and other public entities, aiming at close digital coordination within the State for obtaining this information.”
“We want to update the legal regime of evidence collection in the virtual environment, with new capabilities for collecting digital evidence” and “facilitate the handling of evidence through the use of technological tools, providing reinforced digital means to criminal police bodies, the Public Ministry, and the courts.”
The meeting, taking place at the PGR in Lisbon, brings together the Attorneys General of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste, along with the Deputy Attorney General of Guinea-Bissau, as well as the Attorney from the Macau Special Administrative Region, who holds observer status.
