A 26 year-old Portuguese man, who has not been named, was arrested last week after a 5-star hotel in the tourist centre of the Catalan capital reported that he left without paying a bill of around €1,000. It emerged that he had, in fact, stayed at a total of 14 hotels in Barcelona, running up bills totalling €7,525.44.
In another black week for Novo Banco - the so-called “good bank” that Portugal desperately needs to sell - media reports have exposed a catastrophic ‘mistake’ that saw thousands of euros transferred erroneously to former clients; news that the bank “stands to lose 838 million euros in Angola” and a censure by the IMF on the way the bank’s accounts were made to look ‘better’ by retroactively dumping €2 billion-worth of senior bonds.
With no news on any ‘firmly-committed prospective buyers’ in sight, the first three days of the week could hardly have looked worse.
Then came more bad news.
Fifteen service chiefs with CP - Comboios de Portugal have been exposed for receiving between 1000 and 2000 euros in pay rises, just when the 2016 State Budget stated “there is no room for management bonuses, and pay rises in public businesses are prohibited”.
To make matters worse, the railway authority registered losses of 159,000 euros in its most recently published set of accounts (referring to 2014).
Algarve retailers association ACRAL has finally dropped the injunction it had against IKEA’s mega shopping complex in Loulé, saying it is ‘time to turn a threat into an opportunity’.
With the massive project now underway, ACRAL’s new president Álvaro Viegas is trying a new tack.
To combat tax evasion, 55 countries - including Portugal - are going to start sharing information from 2017. Another 43 countries will join the list a year later.
Bit by bit, the fallout from the Panama Papers is changing the goalposts for the rich, famous and infamous.
Tortuous post-mortem inquiries into the catastrophic Banif ‘resolution’, have seen left wingers round on central bank governor Carlos Costa, with the official government line being that he is guilty of a “serious lack of information”.
Fresh from a six-hour ‘explanation’ given to the parliamentary inquiry into the bank’s collapse, Costa has always maintained that he bears no responsibility for the collapse of the fourth financial institution under his regulatory eye in the space of less than six years.
She has been dubbed the “burlona de amor” (love cheat) for the number of men she duped with her charms over the years. But time looks like it has finally run out for Elizabeth Saraiva, 48.
A Setúbal judge has ruled in favour of eight of the nine men said to have been Saraiva’s victims, condemning the female love rat to 12 years and four months in jail.
Petrol and diesel prices are set to jump again on Monday, thanks to a looming deal between OPEC countries and Russia to ‘freeze’ the production of crude.
According to media reports, the deal has seen a strong increase in trading prices which will now be reflected at the pumps.
