New evidence indicates that the former Economy Minister, Manuel Pinho, indeed was manipulated by EDP when devising the financially ruinous (for taxpayers) CMEC payments.
EDP directly influenced Rui Cartaxo, at the time an advisor to Manuel Pinho, to set up the Costs for the Maintenance of Contractual Equilibrium (CMEC) scheme that has seen taxpayers unwittingly subsidising the privatised electricity supplier.
MPs are more than curious to find out where the sum of €2,110,673 came from, received by Pinho between July 2002 and June 2012 in offshore accounts, for his personal use.
The money is alleged to be in payment for Pinho's ministerial help in getting the CMEC scheme approved to the benefit of EDP and was paid through the BES banking network into an offshore account that Pinho controlled.
This figure includes €14,963.94 a month during the period in which Pinho was Minister of Economy in the José Sócrates government, a period when he was prevented from receiving salary from sources other than his ministerial income.
Damning internal email copies have just been sent to the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action that show that, from at least the beginning of 2007, EDP had access to confidential information from the Economy Ministry related to the CMEC scheme and water resource management - the two areas where Manuel Pinho is suspected of having favoured EDP to the tune of €1.2 billion.
Payments to Pinha were made from Espírito Santo Enterprises in the British Virgin Islands to an offshore company controlled by Manuel Pinho, called the Tartaruga Foundation, based in Panama.
The transfers were carried out 'by order of Ricardo Salgado,' whose BES bank was a major shareholder in EDP which benefitted from Pinho's decisions on CMEC support payments.
Recently revealed emails from João Manso Neto, an EDP director, to the executive president of EDP, António Mexia, show the political intervention required from Pinho was all going ahead smoothly, to the benefit of EDP.
António Mexia and João Manso Neto are suspected of corrupting the former Economy Minister and have been charged with active corruption.
These latest emails contradict statements made by Rui Cartaxo to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on excessive charges in the electricity sector.
Asked by MPs, Cartaxo stated that, as an adviser to Manuel Pinho, he had "no direct intervention" nor did he remember "having been asked for his opinion" regarding the CMEC legislation. The emails suggest otherwise.
Other emails released in November of last year show that Pinho has been hired to teach at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in exchange for a USD 1.2 million sponsorship.
The Public Prosecutor's Office has been collecting e-mails to reinforce its suspicion that the former Economy Minister was shoehorned into Columbia University by EDP as a ‘thank you’ for benefits that EDP received by revising the CMEC contracts and with the extension of the concessions of its dams in 2007.
Correio da Manhã led on Saturday morning with a headline explaining that EDP drafted the CMEC subsidy law to benefit itself and simply handed it in to the government.
'EDP proposed the content of the Council of Ministers' Resolution (RCM) on the two key issues at the center of the Public Prosecution investigation, Costs for Maintenance of Contractual Equilibrium (CMEC) and the water resource management contract,' informs the organ.
