“I still understand that clarifying what has come to light now, but of many other important questions for the financial system, but above all for the democratic state and for the Portuguese, is fundamental”, says Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
A request for a judicial investigation is not the responsibility of the President of the Republic, he says, but there are other forms of investigation, such as the audit that says it has already requested two years ago and that it was promised to be complete by the end of July. “Today is the 28th of July”, recalls the President. Marcelo recalled that the July deadline was transmitted to him following the episode of Autoeuropa.
And what episode was that? In general, it can be described as follows. In April and then again at the beginning of May (in full impact of the pandemic) the prime minister stated in parliament – in response to the Left Bloc – that there would be no more transfers to Novo Banco without the audit that had already been completed. requested by the bank’s operations after the sale to Lone Star. That is, conditioned the transfer to the completion of the audit.
Later, the Prime Minister acknowledged that there was an error and publicly apologized to Catarina Martins, to whom he had given the answer. This is because the transfer in question had already been made. The Finance Minister, Mário Centeno, admitted a communication error with António Costa, but not “a financial error”. When trying to explain himself, he stated that the transfer was not made without the Prime Minister, implying that Costa – like the entire government – had already committed to the transfers to the bank included in the State Budget for 2020: 850 million euros .
Centeno’s statements were seen as disauthorizing Costa. On May 13, Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa visit Autoeuropa. About to be confronted with the ongoing controversy with Centeno, Costa “launches” the re-election of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to the presidency, with Marcelo at his side. The President reciprocates: he dismisses the issue of re-application and prefers to say that Costa “did very well” in making the transfer to Novo Banco subject to the conclusion of the audit of the bank’s credits, because, politically, it was not the same thing to make the payment before or after knowing the audit. By giving Costa reason, he made Centeno’s position unsustainable.
That same night, Costa and Centeno met for several hours. A meeting where Centeno’s future was defined: he would leave after the presentation of the Amending Budget. What happened (but becoming Governor of Banco de Portugal). As for the audit, it is not yet known.
The Resolution Fund was created in 2012 and was committed to injecting money into Novo Banco, the “good bank”, whenever there were problems with the accounts, namely related to the transaction of the toxic assets inherited from BES. According to criticized PSD President Rui Rio, António Costa’s Government “received the invoice and delivered the money” without checking whether the millions delivered were due or were part of potentially fraudulent businesses.
António Ramalho, president of Novo Banco, had already said that this sale was part of the strategy of freeing the excess of houses that still had in the accounts and that had been made at market prices. “There were extremely positive conditions for the reduction of legacy assets to be made in a particularly more relevant and aggressive manner in this period,” said António Ramalho, in Parliament, about the operations Nata and Sertorius. Two operations with losses, which would allow money to be requested from the safeguard mechanism.
Novo Banco rejects, however, that the properties and fractions have been sold at a balance price, as communicated aforementioned by the newspaper Eco. “This operation was not done at balance prices, but at market prices.” The statement adds that, although the operation was known to the Resolution Fund, there was no “any direct cost” to the fund, because “most properties are not covered by the capital protection mechanism”.
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