Remember the former Secretary of State for the Treasury, Joaquim Jorge Pais? He was the ex-Citigroup boss who had a severe and worrying memory lapse over whether he was, or was not, in key meetings with former Prime Minister Jose Socrates’ team when they discussed the concept and mechanics of ‘Swaps’ contracts that have bedevilled Portugal’s publically owned companies ever since.
The national press had some good sport at Pais’ expense and the unearthing of various versions of a key document led observers to conclude that someone somewhere has doctored the evidence of Pais’ involvement. He resigned in a fit of pique and luckily was accepted back at his old company, the publically owned Estradas de Portugal - good of the management to keep his job open.
An official complaint about falsified documents was filed just as Maria Luis Alberquerque took over from the exhausted Vitor Gaspar as Finance Minster. She too was implicated as it was alleged that she would have been aware of the Swaps contracts and their implications, this she always denied.
The results of the investigation today has been made public. The Attorney General's Office concluded that the former Secretary of the Treasury Joaquim Jorge Pais did participate in meetings to sell Swaps contracts to artificially lower the deficit, even though he couldn’t quite remember...
The prosecutor said that the TV company SIC had not falsified documents with the aim of proving the former Secretary of State Joaquim Jorge Pais was in meetings covering the sale of Swaps contracts.
The investigation by the Attorney General's Office included evidence from the Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque and the whole affair has now been archived.
After investigating the matter the prosecutor concluded that "although there are several versions of the same document, the terms of the proposed Citigroup Swaps deal were exactly the same in each." Moreover, "we also found that Joaquim Jorge Pais attended at least two meetings to present the proposed Swaps contracts."
"In August this year, SIC revealed the involvement of Joaquim Jorge Pais, when he worked for Citigroup in 2005, in a meeting with the Socrates government to try and sell swaps that allowed the deficit to be artificially lowered. The former Secretary of the Treasury reacted with ‘confusing responses’ to the news, and the Ministry of Finance accused the TV station of presenting falsified documents and asked the prosecutor to investigate the case."
