It is no surprise that Ricardo Salgado was involved in the sort of offshore schemes that have been laid bare by revelations from the Panama Papers but he has now been caught out lying to the BES parliamentary committee of inquiry.
The Portuguese prosecutor is now involved in investigations into ES Enterprises based in the British Virgin Islands which was used for years to house an Espírito Santo slush fund.
Documents show that €300 million or more has been channelled through ES Enterprises whsoe structure has been used as a convenient and virtually untraceable channel for paying kickbacks and ‘commissions’.
The ES Enterprises company was set up as part of Grupo Espírito Santo (GES) but was never shown in any company documentation or chart, something that Salgado admitted was a “failure.”
The company, hidden in the secretive folds of the GES structure, operated in secret for over 21 years and was set up by members of the High Council of GES, namely the core members of the Espírito Santo family, including the group president Ricardo Salgado and vice president José Manuel Espírito Santo.
The Expresso newspaper today states that "Ricardo Salgado and Jose Manuel Espírito Santo did not tell the truth to the BES parliamentary committee of inquiry" recalling that in December 2014 during the hearing, José Manuel Espírito Santo said that he had 'only recently become aware of the existence of ES Enterprises' and that he had no knowledge what it did, when in fact he had been involved in this slush fund payment machine that was set up 1993.
Ricardo Salgado said to the BES commission of inquiry that ES Enterprises was for the ‘provision of services to the financial sector,’ admitting it should have been noted on the GES organisational chart.
Within the Panama Papers there are almost 100 documents directly relating to ES Enterprises, "some of them with dozens of pages, including exchanges of emails and minutes of meetings that allow us to rebuild not only the history of this GES slush fund but also some of their other activities as important decisions were being taken," write Expresso.
Mossack Fonseca, the financial and legal services company from which the Panama Papers were leaked, carried out work for GES, both directly and through Eurofin, the Swiss company involved in the issuance of debt and that was at the centre of the collapse of the Espírito Santo empire.
ES Enterprises is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands and had an account at the Banque Privée Espírito Santo, part of the empire.
Ricardo Salgado and José Manuel Espírito Santo's credibility has sunk lower than was thought possible. Salgado's duplicity in front of a parliamentary committee will not stand him in good stead if and when he ever is charged and goes to court to face charges surrounding the collapse of the complex and ultimately flawed, Espírito Santo empire.
