Ana Mafalda Prazeres, a great-niece of one of Portugal’s 1974 Revolution heroes, António de Spínola, had a great job advising the wealthy clients of Banco Best on how to manage their money.
One aspect of her life that the well-connected banker managed to keep secret was her gambling addiction which appears to have got the better of her judgement as Prazeres has managed to steal €20 million of her clients’ funds in a simple Ponzi scheme.
Banco Best is owned by Novo Banco which has yet to comment on the matter but with important families losing up to €5 million, according to today’s Correio da Manhã, it won’t be long before explanations will need to be provided.
Banco Best management of course claims that it is not to blame in any way as its clients simply transferred their money out of the bank - to where, it does not care.
Novo Banco famously is involved in the long drawn-out business of saying it will pay out the ripped off BES depositors while doing as little as possible to further this aim. Whether Novo Banco's CEO Stock da Cunha will step in and ‘rescue’ those from whom Prazeres has stolen money remains to be seen but cries of ‘unfair’ will not be far behind any preferential treatment of Best Bank’s VIP customers.
As if on queue for today's 42nd anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, Ana Mafalda Prazeres has managed to get caught out on the same date that her great uncle was appointed as the President of the National Salvation Junta in the turmoil of 1974.
Prazeres seems to have been running a good old Ponzi scheme with stunning returns run at a ‘subsidiary’ of Banco Best, promising and paying out stellar returns while all the time attracting new money to pay depositors up to 10% a month.
Prazeres' coup was to convinced her rich customers to transfer their money to Deutsche Bank, “but it all disappeared” according to today’s paper.
When the carousel stopped, she was nowhere to be found and needless-to-say she is not answering her phone and her private office has not seen her for weeks.
Mozambique, Brazil, Angloa... with millions in her bank account the world is just on big adventure. Or is it – as she may already have spent the lot, if the newspaper report is to be believed, as Prazers is said to owe the wrong people money after getting through up to €15,000 a night for years and borrowing more from Casino operators or loan sharks.
While Prazeres' forebear received the Grã-Cruz da Ordem Militar da Torre e Espada friom President Mário Soares in 1987, for "... his heroic military and civic service and for being a symbol of the April Revolution and first President of the Republic after the dictatorship ..." her actions and activities seem a little less in the line of public duty.
