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This is the last big process that Banco de Portugal (BdP) opened following the events that led to the fall of BES. And perhaps the most complicated of all because it also involves the operations conducted for more than five years between BES and Eurofin and which have allowed Ricardo Salgado, with the help of Amílcar Morais Pires, to continue his work. exhaust the bank in several hundreds of millions of euros.
In a simple way, BES issued zero coupon bonds, that is, they did not pay any interest, which were then sold to Eurofin. These, in turn, resold them at high interest rates, generating a profit absorbed by Eurofin and made available to entities related to the family and the Espírito Santo group.
The OTP made the calculation and concluded that in 2009 and 2014, this device expropriated BES from 3 billion gross euros, which translates into a net loss of 1.3 billion euros. . The difference is explained by the repurchases made since then of certain bonds issued. Until closing it was not possible to talk with Salgado and Morais Pires.
Bonds potentiate the hole
The 54 issues made by the Eurofin intermediary were carried out by the Finance, Markets and Research Department (DFME). by Isabel Almeida, but the BoP believes that there is evidence that orders for these operations to be executed come from above, Morais Pires and Ricardo Salgado.
Therefore, the Bank of Portugal accuses the two bankers of malicious acts of management one of the most serious sanctions for which the fine can rise to 2 million. 39 euros (can not exceed 4 million euros in the final sum of all charges) and, in this case, may be imposed only to the directors, although a number of, like Isabel Almeida, was aware of what happened.
The defendants will now have 30 working days from the notification of the Bank of Portugal to defend themselves and assert their point of view. It is only then that the supervisor will dictate the final conviction decision, which, as we know, is still open to the courts.
Ricardo Salgado and Amílcar Morais Pires, however, are not the only ones targeted in this process. In addition to operations triangulation operations between Eurofin (created in 1999 in Switzerland), BES and GES, there are also other offenses that appear in this new accusation.
Violations on several fronts
José Manuel Espírito (BES Administrator), Isabel Almeida (Director of the DFME), and José Castela (Financial Controller of the GES) are responsible for the acts of illegitimate disobedience to the supervisor's decisions. ), in addition to the "bad" BES and the financial group Espírito Santo (ESFG). In the present case, the acts were carried out between December 2013 and June 2014 and related to several prohibitions of good government applied by the BDP to the BES universe.
Banco de Portugal considers that the accused violated determinations that forced the separation between the financial and non-financial sectors of the group that fueled the escrow account (created to protect the bank from the sale of commercial paper GHG ) by funds from the ESFG when this was prohibited, and which did not reduce the exposure of the financial group
In this basket of Violations are also the comfort letters sent to Venezuelan institutional clients on June 9 in 2014, assuming BES's repayment of a debt that was BEE for an amount of 267 million euros. A letter that was signed by Salgado and José Manuel Espírito Santo and that in the last minutes that dictated the end of BES, still chaired by Salgado, surprised most of its directors. Investing non-financial corporate debt, such as ESI, in retail clients was another of the supervisor's prohibitions that was ignored, as was the determination of funding for non-BES GHG financial entities, such as C & E. Was the case.
The defendants face fines of up to 2 million euros and 5 million euros if they are legal entities.
Prohibited credit amounted to 1 million euros, 2 billion
In the list of charges, there remains another one concerning the granting of BES credits to entities related to the group. In practice, we are talking about the companies and entities that sat on the Group's Board of Directors and would therefore be obliged to respect the rules and limits of credit granting with related parties. These accusations concern only Ricardo Salgado and José Manuel Espírito Santo, since both sat on both the Superior Council and the BES administration. Despite these limitations, BES finally granted a credit to related parties for an amount of 1.2 billion euros. Entities such as the construction company Opway and the holding Espírito Santo Irmãos were the beneficiaries of these operations. Again, the fines in this case can amount to 2 million euros for each of the defendants.
The exposure of BES to group companies, such as ESI, ESFIL and others, intervened in the middle of 2014 in insolvency proceedings, contributed to the bankruptcy in addition to the triangulated operations with Eurofin, as well as exposure of BES to BES Angola, whose sovereign credit guarantee ($ 5.7 billion) was also undervalued. Recall that a few days before the last decline of BES, when the first half accounts were presented, the losses amounted to 3.57 billion euros and the provisions for loans, securities and other assets to 3 , 9 billion euros.
In the context of this process of administrative misconduct, Expresso knows that other former directors of BES, such as João Freixa, Jorge Martins and Joaquim Goes, have been charged and n & # 39; 39 were not charged. News that will surely make them breathe with relief.
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