Former Minister, Manuel Pinho, is suspected of using a tax forgiveness scheme to legalise offshore payments received from BES.
The Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating Manuel Pinho's alleged appeal to tax forgiveness scheme under the governments of José Sócrates and Passos Coelho which allowed undeclared money nestling in offshore accounts to be transferred to Portugal.
The Public Ministry claims the money was sent from ES Enterprises, the notorious company used to pay bribes.
The payments were made from ES-Enterprises, based in the British Virgin Islands, to an offshore company controlled by Manuel Pinho, called the Tartaruga Foundation, in Panama.
The prosecutors in the EDP bribery case, in which Pinho is the central figure, are aware of the application to import he money, no questions asked.
The suspicion is that, “Taking advantage of the legal benefit of the extraordinary regularization regimes (RERT), Manuel Pinho and/ or his wife, Alexandra Pinho, in February 2013."
According to Correio da Manhã, which has consulted the EDP bribery case files at the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action, the former Minister of the Economy and his wife may have taken advantage of the RERT regime under the Passos Coelho government in 2012, and during the administration of José Sócrates.
The prosecutors' suspicions have prompted prosecutors to request copies of the applications held at the Bank of Portugal.
Between 2002 and 2014, Manuel Pinho received over €3 million from ES Enterprise, the covert Grupo Espírito Santo company used to channel funds to those its president, Ricardo Salgado, wished to reward for taking actions that benefitted any of his companies, invariably at the expense of taxpayers.
Salgado's bank (BES) was a major shareholder in EDP which benefitted from certain of Pinho's decisions on CMEC support payments that have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions in unwarranted excess fees that boosted EDP's profits.
Of the total slipped to Pinho, €778,000 was during the period when he was a government minister - somewhat of a double 'no-no'.
The prosecutors contend that Pinho did not declare this amount on his income tax returns, "as he would not have done in relation to the amounts he had been receiving from GES since at least 2002 through ES Enterprise." Therefore, "it is believable" that Pinho or the woman may also have joined the RERT tax pardon scheme.
