Every summer, Armando Pereira, who co-founded the Altice Group alongside Patrick Drahi in 2002, recharges his batteries at Quinta das Casas Novas, his huge villa overlooking Guilhofrei, a small village 90 kilometers northeast of Porto in Portugal. Built in his native region, where the young Armando used to sell fabric at the markets to escape his family's poverty, the luxurious residence complete with a swimming pool, tennis and beach volleyball courts, two golf greens, a go-kart course and a heliport, is the stuff of legend for the Portuguese businessman.

As his daughter, Gaëlle, recounted in a biography published in 2016 (Le Milliardaire aux Pieds Nus, "The Barefoot Billionaire"), he immigrated to France in 1966 at the age of 14, with 2,000 escudos to his name (the equivalent of €10). Thanks to Altice, Pereira has become one of Portugal's leading fortunes. In its 2023 ranking, the magazine Challenges estimated his worth at €1.6 billion. In May 2015, Portuguese Finance Minister Antonio Pires de Lima even described him as the "hero of Vieira do Minho": Pereira had pulled out all the stops to ensure that Altice Portugal chose the village to set up a telephone call center.

But on July 13, 2023, the "hero" became a pariah. At around 10 am, several police and tax officials rang the doorbell at La Quinta. Commissioned by prosecutor Rosario Teixeira, head of the Portuguese Central Department of Criminal Investigation and Prosecution, they had been investigating suspected corruption, aggravated tax fraud, forgery and money laundering for almost three years. Simultaneous searches are being carried out throughout the country by nearly 100 investigators.

Pereira was arrested and taken to the Moscavide police station in Lisbon. He stayed there for 10 days. Released on July 24, he has since been under house arrest in his villa, without an electronic bracelet or police surveillance. The only constraint is that his helicopter, which he would use to return to his villa once he had disembarked from his private jet, has been confiscated. Two businessmen close to Pereira, Alvaro Gil Loureiro and Hernani Vaz Antunes, as well as Antunes's daughter, Jessica, were also charged in Operation Picoas – the Portuguese word for "penitence," named after the subway station next to Altice Portugal's Lisbon headquarters.

The magistrates were tipped off thanks to wiretapping carried out as part of an earlier investigation into corruption in Portuguese football, which also implicated Antunes. Organized from Portugal, with branches in the Madeira free trade zone and in tax havens such as the United Arab Emirates, the alleged corruption scheme is said to have enabled Altice Portugal to divert commissions on purchases from dozens of suppliers, including telecommunications equipment manufacturers Nokia, Huawei and Cisco.

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