The governor of the Bank of Portugal considers it appropriate that the full internal audit report into the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo should not be published and that it will not be made available to parliamentfor discussion.
Secrecy laws are being used by the regulator of Portugal’s financial sector to prevent the disclosure of what it calls ‘confidential documents’ contaned in the evaluation drawn up by the Bank of Portugal into its own actions surrounding the BES collapse.
"It is a duty of confidentiality in relation to other people's secrets."
The statements were in response to a request from the Socialist Party to access the full report of the Bank of Portugal’s internal evaluation as only the conclusions and recommendations had been released.
The written response to parliament from the Bank of Portugal, run by the unpopular Carlos Costa, claimed that "supervisory secrecy is not established by law for the benefit of the Bank of Portugal but as a means of keeping information from third parties,"
The Bank of Portugal therefore has decided that it is above parliamentary scrutiny and does not ahve to answetr to MPs, "The Bank of Portugal is not politically responsible to Parliament," adding that this central bank independence from government "prevents the submersion of the central bank by the political mechanisms of the accountability of the executive."
"The supervisory authority’s obligation for secrecy applies fully to parliamentary committee hearings. This limits the disclosure requirements of the Bank of Portugal and its accountability to Parliament."
This refusal by Carlos Costa’s management follows a request made in the Committee of Budget and Finance on the internal evaluation of BES by the Bank of Portugal.
The bank had declined to submit various documents to the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the management of BES and Grupo Espírito Santo. The governor Carlos Costa declined to deliver the full audit report, saying that they were secret.
Comments
Carlos Costa or Carlos Salazar ?
Soon we will hear - to the judge "Your honour. We cannot defend our client as we do not have access to all the documents necessary for his defence. They are being withheld by the Bank of Portugal. We request that our client therefore be released and, given his high status, substantially compensated for the insults he has suffered since being accused of crashing his family bank"
(This is the shorter summarised english language translation of the defence lawyers speech which, in Portuguese, went on for several hours and included a looong luuunch break)