Ricardo Salgado has been accused of keeping two sets of books for Espírito Santo International using a simple Excel sheet on a computer in his office on the 15th floor of the BES headquarters in Lisbon.
The revelation was made by an accounts manager at the Espírito Santo Group, being questioned by members of the commission of inquiry looking into BES and its collapse.
This parallel accounting spreadsheet contained data recording the real financial situation of Espírito Santo International and was updated every month.
The Excel sheet was started in 2008 when a relatively paltry deficit of €180 million was concealed.
The lies continued each month with the true financial situation successfully hidden from view until, five years later in late 2013, the deficit has ballooned to €1.3 billion which even Salgado was having trouble in explaining away.
Salgado’s stand-alone computer recorded in detail the true losses and according to the accounts manager, when the scale of debts finally needed to be announced, the former CEO gave him a direct order to keep quiet as to the double record keeping that has been going on and to tell the internal auditors that there had been a €1.3 billion ‘accounting error.’
The accounts manager said he could not contradict the request by Salgado and was told that if he spilled the beans, the probable collapse of Grupo Espírito Santo would be down to him.
