The investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes could lead to criminal charges for officers involved in the shooting, a lawyer for the Independent Police Complaints Commission said today.

Richard Latham QC was speaking for the IPCC at the coroner's inquest into de Menezes's death. The inquest was adjourned today until February 23 next year to allow time for the IPCC to complete its report. Mr Latham said the IPCC intends to finish its inquiry before Christmas.

"The situation is this. There is an intention to report before Christmas. No one would expect an investigation such as this to be hurried," said Mr Latham. "It must be wide-ranging and conducted with very considerable care.

"In due course there may, I emphasise the may, be recommendations to the Director (of Public Prosecutions) that criminal proceedings should be initiated or a recommendation to the Metropolitan Police or the Metropolitan Police Authority that disciplinary proceedings may arise," he added.

A criminal trial or disciplinary proceedings that result from the IPCC inquiry would delay the release to the public of the final report into the disastrous police operation.

Today's preliminary hearing at the Inner South District Coroner’s Court coincided with the first news conference given by the two senior Brazilian judicial officials who arrived in London yesterday to monitor the investigation into the shooting of de Menezes on July 22.

Wagner Goncalves, Brazil’s deputy attorney general, and Marcio Pereira Pinto Garcia, a high-ranking Brazilian Justice Ministry official, said this afternoon that they had come to Britain to discuss the legal process surrounding the inquiry into the shooting.

The two officials said that their goal was to purely to find out more about British legislation, and that they had organised their visit to London before last Tuesday's leak of witness statements and photographs from the IPCC inquiry, which reignited the controversy over the shooting.

"We are not replacing the British legal authorities. We are just trying to find out about the process in itself... and to try and understand what is going on," said Senhor Garcia, who admitted that he was left "perplexed" by last week's leaked evidence, which suggested a series of errors in the police operation that led to the death of Mr de Menezes.

The two officials have not been given the chance to question any Metropolitan Police officers involved in the shooting. Nor have they been shown any of the evidence compiled by the IPCC so far.

The Brazilian officials confirmed their confidence in their British counterparts.

Meanwhile, questions were growing over the alleged failure of the closed-circuit television cameras in Stockwell Underground station to record the shooting of Mr de Menezes.

Staff at the station have protested at police suggestions that all five cameras in the vicinty were not working when officers followed Mr de Menezes through the station, before shooting him eight times on a Tube train on the morning of July 22.

They have allegedly told IPCC investigators that three of the four cameras covering the station platform were working, and that they do not know why the camera inside the carriage would not have filmed the moments when the Brazilian electrician was shot dead.

The CCTV system is maintained by Tube Lines, the private sector consortium that is in charge of maintaining the Northern Line. It is understood to have confirmed that the cameras were working that morning. It is not known if staff in the control room saw the shooting unfold on their screens.

However, one senior Tube official said yesterday: "What are the realistic odds of five cameras — four on the platform, one in the carriage — all being on the blink?"

When asked about the evidence given to the IPCC from the Metropolitan Police, John Cummins, the senior investigating officer in charge of the inquiry, told the coroner's inquest this morning that he had received a "comprehensive handover package".

But he declined to clarify whether the package contained any footage from cameras in Stockwell station.

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