Ricardo Salgado has managed to persuade the court that €1.5 million of a €3 million bail demand already paid is sufficient inducement for him not to skip the country, and again can move freely amongst us.
Salgado’s house arrest is over and the charade that he could not come up with sufficient funds to pay his own bail seems to have worked.
The former president of BES remains prohibited from leaving the country and from contacting other defendants in the case against him.
Such is the judiciary’s distrust of this banker that Salgado’s property already has been seized in case he loses in court, has to pay fines, or if BES depositors have legitimate claims on his assets.
The court was not too harsh with the old crook though, it reduced the bail demand from €3 million to €1.5 million and seems to have allowed a bail demand already lodged as part of the Monte Branco money laundering case to cover the bail requirement for the Universo Espírito Santo case.
The Attorney General's Office said today that the Criminal Court has dropped his bail from €3 million to €1.5 million in connection with the Universo Espírito Santo case.
Ricardo Salgado also must suffer the indignity of presenting himself three times a week at his local nearest police station, where the gentlemen of the press no doubt will be gathered.
Salgado is in good company as the Universo Espírito Santo case involves Isabel Almeida, the former BES financial director who was the right hand woman of former BES director Morais Pires, António Soares a former BES Vida director, Pedro Luís Costa a former administrator of Espírito Santo Ativos Financeiros, José Castella the former head of treasury at the Espírito Santo Group, and Claudia Boal de Faria who worked in sales at BES.
The charges are extensive and include forgery, computer forgery, aggravated fraud, breach of trust, tax evasion, corruption in the private sector and money laundering.
