The August holiday month is nearly over for the hundreds of BES depositors who returned to Portugal and spent much of their holiday mounting protests in front of Novo Banco branches to demand their money back.
The fight is not over as today their lawyer said that one option being followed up is to seek redress in the Portuguese courts and at international judicial institutions such as the United Nations and the European Court of Justice.
Having got nowhere with Novo Banco and the Bank of Portugal, which they hold responsible for wiping out their deposits when BES turned into Novo Banco while shedding BES’s liabilities, the depositors group is in no mood to roll over and die. Today they were to be found in Oporto pelting the local branch with well aimed eggs.
The group's lawyer has announced that the Association of Pissed Off and Deceived Holders of Commercial Paper (AIEPC) plans court action in September against Novo Banco and the Bank de Portugal.
This well may be after Novo Banco has been sold to Anbang Insurance of China, just to complicate matters.
Legal claims will illustrate the way depositors were conned into moving their safe deposits into commercial paper issued by companies in the Espírito Santo Group and the "contradictions in four resolutions issued by the Bank of Portugal” as it was responsible for overseeing the legitimacy of these financial products
Nuno Vieira, AIEPC’s lawyer said this weekend that the aim of the legal processes is “to prevent the expiry of the claimants’ rights to fair compensation for the purchase of commercial paper issued by Espírito Santo Group.”
Novo Banco has offered a solution to repay the depositors but the deal was rejected as being long term and failed to refund all their money.
Another more lenient offer from Novo Banco was rejected by the Bank of Portugal which is keen to sell Novo Banco for as high a price as possible and without having to pay off the depositors both from abroad and in Portugal.
Portugal's government remains silent on the issue, except to comment with an astonishing degree of cynicism that 'this is a banking matter.'
