The former head of the Energy and Geology Directorate, Miguel Barreto Caldeira Antunes, has been made an official suspect in Operation Cyclone which is looking into corruption at EDP, one of the country's largest companies.
Miguel Barreto was the man responsible for the issuing a highly advantageous, open-ended licence to EDP for the power station in Sines that has a well-deserved reputation for air pollution.
The businessman, who used to work for the Boston Consulting Group, which has supplied many top directors to Portugal's power industry, left public service a year after signing the suspiciously advantageous Sines agreement and set up his own consultancy with the company Martifer, a renewable energy specialist.
This company, HomeEnergy, was sold to EDP in 2011, netting Miguel Barreto €1.4 million, a deal that only now being investigated as part of the EDP corruption probe into price fixing - Operation Cyclone.
Miguel Barreto now is an official suspect and is being questioned about his involvement in EDP which in turn is under investigation, along with distribution network company REN, due to activities that ensured electricity customers ended up paying guaranteed compensation for cancelled supply contracts under the complex Contractual Equilibrium Maintenance Cost (CMEC) agreements, prior to and after EDP was sold off.
The China Three Gorges company, which now owns 21.35% of EDP's, seems to have paid over the odds for its EDP stake as it was assured that the flow of hundreds of millions of euros of excess profits, made by overcharging electricity users, would continue indefinitely.
Miguel Barreto Caldeira Antunes' name now joins the other eight defendants in the case: the former Economy Minister, Manuel Pinho; EDP's President, António Mexia; João Manso Neto (EDP Administrator and President of EDP Renewables); João Conceição (REN administrator and former advisor to Manuel Pinho); Rui Cartaxo (former president of REN and former advisor to Manuel Pinho); Pedro Furtado (REN board member), Pedro Rezende and Jorge Ribeirinho Machado (former EDP directors).
Miguel Barreto Caldeira Antunes, arguido #9
Comments
I truly hope my suspicions are proved wrong, but I won't be holding my breath.