The parliamentary enquiry into the collapse of BES is almost certain to run out of time and its members will ask for an extension to next May
Today’s list of those the parliamentary enquiry members have called is a Who’s Who of the great and maybe not so good, all 26 of them, including Finance Minister Maria Luís Albuquerque.
The enquiry’s five cross-party members agreed on the names and are intent on questioning all those from the Espírito Santo extended family who held positions of power as BES and Grupo Espírito Santo collapsed.
The 26 are compelled to testify at the hearings in Lisbon which should start in the coming weeks.
Some of the names are not family members but are connected to allied companies.
Zeinal ‘€5.4 million Golden Goodbye’ Bava and Henrique ‘I had shareholders interests in mind’ Granadeiro are examples.
Both were presidents of Portugal Telecom which for reasons yet to be discovered, lent an Espírito Santo Group company, Rioforte, the contents of the safe without spotting that it was a loan unlikely to be repaid, all €900 million of it.
Pedro Queiroz Pereira from Portucel will be called, he who eventually fell out with BES boss Ricardo Salgado and who failed to tell the Bank of Portugal about irregularities in Espitito Santo.
There’s Álvaro Sobrinho too, the man who clashed with Salgado over BES Angola, the bank which caused heavy losses for BES in Portugal and was central to Salgado's web of mystery.
The entire Superior Council of the Espírito Santo Group will be called to explain events and the reasons for their decisions.
Even the reclusive Maria do Carmo Galvao Moniz, another family member and principal shareholder of GES, has been called.
The report to be given to the committee by Francisco Machado da Cruz, the former chief accountant at Espírito Santo International, also should be illuminating. Cruz is blamed by Ricardo Salgado of causing the house of cards to collapse around his ears and certainly is off Salgado's Christmas Card list for ever.
Finance Minister Maria Luís Albuquerque has already given her views to the Budget and Finance Committee, twice, but will have to appear in front of the parliamentary committee as all five committee members had her ionj their list.
The press will be run off its feet in Lisbon in the next 4-6 months as a succession of big names including Paulo Portas, Pires de Lima, Vítor Gaspar and Carlos Moedas are raised from their political coffins to give evidence in the clear daylight of truth that all hope will be present as the nation leans the truth behind the BES collapse.
Even members of the Troika will be in town and representatives from the IMF and European Central Bank will be pleased to offer their views.
The Bank of Portugal, the stock market regulator CMVM, the Instituto de Seguros de Portugal all will have to field their finest to explain anything they might know that may have led to the collapse of BES and the subsequent rather rushed rescue.
Vítor Bento, who for reasons best known to his lawyer declined to speak to the Budget Committee, has to turn up to this enquiry on pain of a stiff fine.
Other bankers called to add their views are Fernando Ulrich, Chairman of BPI, Nuno Amado, president of BCP, and José de Matos, president of Caixa Geral.
The parliamentary inquiry meets on 28 October, where the one item on the agenda it to sort out the forthcoming mountain of work and who does what.
The first hearings of the 'list of 26' are expected to begin in a couple of weeks and the committee has until February to squeeze it all in.
Luckily, Portuguese legislation allows an extension for a further 90 days, this looks like it will be needed.
Those that will be summoned to appear are:
Maria Luís Albuquerque – Minister of Finance
Ricardo Salgado – former president of BES
Antonio Ricciardi - Espírito Santo family member
Manuel Fernando Espírito Santo Silva - Espírito Santo family member
José Manuel Espírito Santo Silva - Espírito Santo family member
Pedro Mosqueira do Amaral - Espírito Santo family member
José Maria Ricciardi - Espírito Santo family member
Maria do Carmo Moniz Galvão Espirito Santo Silva - Espírito Santo family member
Ricardo Abecassis - Espírito Santo family member
Amílcar Morais Pires – formely at BES
António Souto - formely at BES
Joaquim Goes - formely at BES
Francisco Machado da Cruz – accountant at Espírito Santo International
Carlos Costa –governor of the Bank of Portugal
Pedro Duarte Neves - vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal
Carlos Tavares – head of the stock market regulator CMVM
José Almaça – head of ISP
Laginha de Sousa – head of Euronext (Lisbon Stock Exchange)
Sikander Sattar – head of KPMG in Portugal
Vitor Bento – former head of Novo Banco
Stock da Cunha – head of Novo Banco
Máximo dos Santos – head of BES "bad bank"
Pedro Queiroz Pereira – head of Semapa
Álvaro Sobrinho – former boss of BES Angola
Zeinal Bava – former boss of Oi/Portual Telecom
Henrique Granadeiro – former head of Portugal Telecom
Comments
Little more time taken than some North European saying 'Pastel de nata you call this ? Yummy ! Now before we have this brief chat; please remind us again - and point to where you are on this map'.
And certainly not spending the extra 5 minutes for Spain and Portugal to agree to kick into touch their non -acceptance of 'historical' claims to territory by other member states.
Particularly where said territory - as with Portugal - has already been handed back decades ago to the original inhabitants !!!
Yet Turkey and Ukraine have to wait years to get into this supposedly 'special club'.
These hopefuls failing on the everyday irregularities of Portuguese life - corruption, trafficking of influence, graft etc etc
And to emphasise the sterility - having a non-functioning democracy; how often does the same elite Portuguese families get 'elected' into the mafia municipals and freguesia's ???
So freezing any chance of progress.
I hope that I am wrong.