Steelme promised light-steel (LSF) houses, the segment of modular and prefabricated homes, ready in a few months, turnkey. It operated under the 5D Home brand and, on the surface, had signs of credibility: according to the report, it showed clients a factory in Maia, and its building system even appeared in an R&D project alongside Saint-Gobain and the University of Aveiro. Dozens of families signed contracts and paid tens of thousands of euros upfront. According to the accounts, many were left without the house they had contracted and without recovering what they had paid.
The case was the subject of an investigative report by SÁBADO, aired on CMTV in March 2023. We went to cross-reference the public records to understand what was, in fact, accessible in official sources about this company and the people who ran it. We gather here everything that came to light, with each fact anchored to its source.
This article brings together two different things. On one hand, the official public records we confirmed and cross-referenced: company incorporations and dissolutions, insolvency proceedings, and the history of the companies and the people who run them. On the other, the accounts and allegations that came to light through the report and the affected clients. We always signal which is which. The accounts are not, in themselves, officially confirmed, and are presented as what they are, testimonies, not guaranteed truths. Only what is verifiable in a public source enters the ObraXRAY report on each company.
The web, in summary
Searching Steelme one company at a time is not enough to see the whole picture. What appears when you cross-reference the tax number of the people who run it is a small web: the company that was declared insolvent and a second one, with the same two managers and the same light-steel activity, since dissolved.
| Company | Incorporated | Status in the records | IMPIC licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steelme - Estruturas de Aço Leve, Lda (5D Home brand) | 2019 | Insolvent, declared by court ruling (2023) | No |
| Steelme - Dry Construction, Lda | 2022 | Dissolved (2024), same managers | No |
The same cross-reference also shows that the founding shareholders set up, in 2022, another company in a different field, real estate, which remains active and, in the records consulted, does not show the negative signals described here; nothing that follows about Steelme should be imputed to it. And there is the piece that may be the most surprising: one of the managers who controls Steelme had, himself, a personal insolvency declared in 2010, thirteen years before Steelme went insolvent. We get there below.
Confirmed signals and allegations, kept apart
Confirmed in public records:
- Steelme was declared insolvent by court ruling, at the Aveiro Commercial Court, in 2023. It is not a pending petition, it is a declared insolvency.
- Steelme has no construction licence and has its annual accounts unfiled for the last few years.
- Steelme - Dry Construction, with the same two managers and the same light-steel activity, was dissolved in 2024.
- Several of the clients who told their story to the report appear on the official list of creditors in the insolvency proceedings.
- One of Steelme's managers, José Carlos de Oliveira Quelhas, had a personal insolvency declared in 2010, published in the Diário da República.
Attributed to the report and the affected clients (not verified by us):
- Works halted midway and advance payments made without matching progress on site.
- A pattern reported as repeated across several families.
- Criminal complaints for aggravated fraud against the company, its owners and an architect.
- Failure to issue invoices and the creation of a new company while the works were stalled.
What the SÁBADO report revealed about Steelme
According to the SÁBADO investigation, at least 20 families paid thousands of euros for light-steel houses that were never built or were left unfinished, and filed criminal complaints for aggravated fraud. The stories repeat: turnkey contracts, a fast start to build confidence, and then silence.
According to the report, the people in charge were approached by the SÁBADO team and gave no substantive explanation; in one of these approaches, one of the individuals reacted angrily and called the police on the journalists. Nothing the affected clients or the report describe amounts, in itself, to proof of a crime, that can only be declared by a court. What follows are accounts attributed to the report and to the affected clients themselves.
The clients' accounts
Débora and Marcelo (Sesimbra). In August 2021 they signed a turnkey contract for a three-bedroom house worth 180 thousand euros, with a ten-month deadline. The work started, stopped in January 2022 and never resumed. They say they paid around 90 thousand euros and calculated a loss of around 30 thousand between what they paid and what was done, and they are paying a mortgage and rent at the same time.
Hugo Carvalho (Vila Franca de Xira). In September 2021 he signed a contract for a four-bedroom house worth 160 thousand euros. He paid around 20 thousand euros and, he says, nothing at all was built for him. He cancelled the contract nine months later, with no work started.
Paula and Nuno (Alcochete). A March 2022 contract for a four-bedroom house worth 339 thousand euros. They paid around 40 thousand euros and the work amounted to a few foundation piles. They cancelled in November 2022 and ended up selling the plot with the approved project.
Sandra and Dário (Alentejo). Among the first clients, with a 2021 contract for a three-bedroom house worth 130 thousand euros. They paid around 9,800 euros, the project took months and the house never left the drawing board. They put family plans on hold waiting for work that never began.
What the public records show
Here we leave the accounts and move into what is verifiable in a public source: the registry publications, the insolvency proceedings on the Citius portal and the Diário da República.
Steelme: insolvency declared (2023)
Steelme - Estruturas de Aço Leve, Lda, incorporated in 2019, in Ovar, was declared insolvent by court ruling at the Aveiro Commercial Court, published in September 2023. The records also show an earlier insolvency case, filed in March 2023 by suppliers, and, after the ruling, an incident for the separation and return of assets. The company has no registered construction licence and has its annual accounts unfiled for the last few years. It is run by José Carlos de Oliveira Quelhas and João Manuel Teixeira de Freitas.
This is an important difference from other cases: this is not a pending insolvency petition, nor a mere television account. There is a public ruling declaring insolvency, with an appointed administrator and a list of creditors.
Clients from the report appear as creditors in the insolvency proceedings
Several of the clients who told their story to the report appear, by name, on the official list of creditors in the insolvency ruling, on the Citius portal. Alongside them, the creditors include the State (Tax Authority), Social Security and a consumer-credit lender. It is proof that what was seen in the report matched the public record: the same people, the same case.
Steelme - Dry Construction: the second company of the same managers
Steelme - Dry Construction, Lda, incorporated in 2022, based in Guimarães, has the same two managers as Steelme and the same activity, light-steel structures. In the records, it was dissolved in January 2024. It is the kind of continuity, the same people around a new company while the previous one sinks, that only shows up when you cross-reference the history of those who run it, and not when you search a single company in isolation.
5D Home: why Steelme looked credible on the surface
This is worth underlining, because it is at the heart of the problem. Steelme did not look like a scheme on the surface. It operated under the 5D Home brand, with technical language and a presence in construction communities, and its light-steel building system even appeared in the THERMACORE research project, alongside Saint-Gobain, the University of Aveiro and another company. To a client searching online, all of this reads as signs of credibility.
What the commercial surface does not show is the rest: the declared insolvency, the second dissolved company and the personal history of those in charge. The risk was behind the façade, not in it.
The history of those who ran it
This is where we found the strongest signal, and the hardest to see for anyone who only looks at the company. One of the managers who controls Steelme, José Carlos de Oliveira Quelhas, an architect, was declared personally insolvent by a 2010 court ruling, in Porto, published in the Diário da República. The ruling records that his assets were not foreseeably sufficient to pay the debts, that is, an insolvency for insufficiency of assets.
There is no finding of culpable insolvency here, and this record is from 2010, well before Steelme. But it is exactly the kind of background a client would want to know before handing tens of thousands of euros to a company controlled by that same person. It sits in a public record, the Diário da República, separate from everything else.
Why it is hard to vet a builder with manual searches alone
Each of these pieces lives in a different source. The licence is at IMPIC. The company's insolvency is on Citius. The manager's personal insolvency, from 2010, is in the Diário da República. The links between companies are in the registry publications. The brand and the partnerships are on the open internet. No one, before signing a contract for a house, goes around piecing all of this together by hand, and many of these sources do not even let you search by the name of the person who runs the company.
This is what we built ObraXRAY for: proprietary technology that cross-references data from several official public sources, from the tax number, to show not just the company, but also the risk signals tied to whoever runs it.
How to vet a builder, and who is behind it
Even without ObraXRAY, three steps greatly reduce the risk:
- Confirm the company's status and licence. Check whether the company is active or insolvent and whether it has a valid construction licence at IMPIC. A valid licence is necessary but, on its own, is not enough.
- Search for insolvencies and enforcement actions by the company's tax number. On the Citius portal, check whether the company has or had insolvency proceedings. A declared insolvency is a stop sign.
- Cross-reference the history of those who run it. Look at which other companies are linked to the same shareholders and managers, and whether any of them failed or was dissolved. This is where phoenix companies and personal backgrounds show up.
What this article does not say
This article does not claim that José Carlos de Oliveira Quelhas, João Manuel Teixeira de Freitas or any of the companies mentioned committed a crime; that conclusion can only be drawn by a court. The accounts of the affected clients and of the modus operandi are attributed to the SÁBADO report and to the affected clients themselves, and were not independently verified by us. The company of the same corporate origin that we mentioned, Staal Property Developers, operates in a different field, real estate, is active and has, in the records, no insolvency or proceedings; nothing described here about Steelme concerns it. What we present as confirmed are the public records of the companies, Steelme's insolvency on the Citius portal and the personal insolvency record published in the Diário da República. Wherever information comes from the report, it is presented as an allegation or testimony. The aim is to show that there were public signals of risk, scattered across several sources, that were worth checking before hiring.
This article is based on information made public by the investigative report by SÁBADO (aired on CMTV), and on records available in the Diário da República, the commercial registry publications and the public insolvency lists. It is informational and does not constitute legal advice. The companies and individuals mentioned have a right of reply.