The two conclusions are among the party's proposed amendments to the draft report of a parliamentary inquiry into the theft in June 2017 at the Tancos army depot. The committee of inquiry’s debate on the report is scheduled for 18 June.

The CDS-PP, which is on the right of the political spectrum, proposes that one of the conclusions of the report should be that "the statements made publicly by the Prime Minister" on 26 October 2018, which "alleged a lack of knowledge [on his part] of the documents delivered by the director-general of the PJM [military police] to the chief of staff of the then Minister of National Defense", pointing to an alleged concealment on the part of the PJM of the circumstances of the materiel’s recovery, “do not correspond to the truth".

The party claims that Costa "had knowledge of the contents of the documents" on 12 October 12 that year.

At the committee session on 31 May at which Socialist deputy Ricardo Bexiga, the committee rapporteur, presented the preliminary report, the CDS-PP argued that Costa and his then defence minister bore "political responsibilities".

CDS-PP deputy Telmo Correia argued that the prime minister "knew [of the staging of the recovery] and after knowing continued to try to omit the fact," in a reference to Costa's statements to journalists on 26 October 2018 that he was unaware of any memorandum or other document on the recovery of the materiel.

In a hearing of the committee, Francisco André, Costa's chief of staff, revealed that he handed the document to the prime minister on the morning of 12 October, before a "work meeting" that Costa was to have with the defence minister.

In their text accompanying the conclusions, the CDS-PP accuse the Socialist Party and Bexiga of seeking to "conceal the political responsibilities of the current government, especially the former minister of National Defence, Azeredo Lopes, and the prime minister himself, António Costa, omitting from the report facts that prove that [this responsibility] exists either by action or by omission."

In the party’s view, the documents submitted by Luís Vieira, the then director of the PJM, and by then PJM inspector Vasco Brazão to Lieutenant-General António Martins Pereira, then head of the defence minister’s office, "contained pertinent information and indications of the illegal action of the PJM in the recovery of military material in Chamusca, in which was described with sufficient detail its [alleged] staging" by the PJM.

The committee’s preliminary report, drafted by Bexiga, does not point to any accountability on the part of the former defence minister, who resigned in 2018, or of the prime minister.

The theft of war material was announced by the army on 29 June, 2017. Four months later, the PJM announced that the stolen materiel had been recovered at Chamusca, some 20km from Tancos, with the help of members of the criminal investigation unit of National Republican Guard (GNR) at Loulé, in the Algarve.

Among the items stolen in June 2017 were grenades, anti-tank weapons, plastic explosives and a large amount of ammunition.