A resplendent Ricardo Salgado today faced his inquisitors in parliament and appeared truly to believe that the collapse of BES and the suspicious submarine money transfers were nothing to do with him, others were to blame and that he is guilty of nothing.
Using the schoolboy excuse of ‘a big boy did it and ran away’ Salgado, the former doyenne of the Espírito Santo Group, appeared calm and collected as he trotted out a well-prepared list of counter arguments when faced with examples of his alleged failures.
DDT, as he is known in the financial world, standing for Dono Disto Tudo - the boss of all of this - said this nickname had served only to damage his reputation, "I was never, never thought to be the owner of it all. It was a name given to harm me."
"I did not come here try to put myself in the position of a victim, I came here with objectivity to explain my view of events. My defence will be made in the courts," said the former banker who has been arrested for suspected fraud, money-laundering, and abuse of confidence and is on €3 million bail.
MP Mariana Mortágua pointed out that "The owner of all of this seems here to have been the victim of all of this," to which the ever so ‘umble Salgado said he was just a working man and had been harmed by the DDT nickname.
Salgado denied the concealment of the Espírito Santo Group's liabilities, "I did not give instructions to conceal liabilities,” and stressed that his goal today was to defend the "honour and dignity of his family," and that he was selfless in his dealings, "I have always defended the interests of customers, within an extremely complex political, economic and financial environment. I've never experienced a crisis of this size."
As for the submarines case and associated suspicious money transfers, Salgado said that it was a mistake for the Espírito Santo Group to have got involved, that it had not paid bribes to anyone “at a political level” during the submarine purchase or afterwards, that during the whole affair he was surrounded by cheats and that “we opted not to go into any more further operations like it.”
Indeed, Salgado said that he had "a guarantee from Escom (the BES owned subsidiary) that no commissions were paid to anyone in the political arena."
He added that this matter had been investigated by the Public Ministry and the Bank of Portugal and both concluded that the amount paid to members of the Espírito Santo Group board was for 'advice,' as claimed. He admits to a €5 million payment for advice, but the recording of the board meeting that is in the possession of Salgado’s prosecution shows a higher figure being discussed.
As for the dramatic collapse of Banco Espírito Santo, Salgado said that it had not failed, but that it was forced under by the hasty actions of the Bank of Portugal.
Salgado regrets not having had the time he requested to sort out the bank’s problems, "There was pressure to sell and he who sells in a hurry, sells badly." On the eve of the bank’s dissolution, Salgado claimed the bank had capital of €3.7 billion but that the bank was “forced to disappear.”
"The BES problem could have been solved if we had been given more time," said the former BES chief executive.
Salgado took the opportunity today to lay out the arguments that he may employ when in a court of law.
Whether the members of parliament today believed the assertions that Salgado was not responsible for the BES collapse is not yet recorded but the fact that BES hid substantial losses, blamed 'accounting errors' for €1.2 billion of funds that remain unaccounted for, used a dodgy Angolan government guarantee to make the figures look better and reported half yearly losses of over €3 billion were the reasons that BES went under.
It was not in the Bank of Portugal’s interests to force the bank to close, indeed it gave BES so much leeway that its governor is under suspicion of not treating BES with sufficient level headed rigour.
Sensibly, Salgado directly did not blame anyone for his position, apart from a hasty Bank of Portugal. He did blame the press for trial by media but this is a well used and hopefully useless gripe which if used in his later defence in court will cause even more acerbic reporting of the often murky world of the Espírito Santo Group.
