The Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Rocha Andrade, informed Parliament today that there had been a failure to transfer data between the Finance Portal and the central system that caused 14,000 offshore transfers amounting to €10 billion, to avoid inspection.
The software used has already been discontinued and another technology in place that ensured the 2015 values were accurate, he added, but the 2011 to 2014 offshore transfer details had not been reported, or inspected by the taxman.
An offshore transfer report is sent each year from Portugal’s high street banks to the Bank of Portugal which sends the information to the Treasury. A discrepancy of around €10 billion managed to escape the scrutiny of the Treasury’s tax inspectors, rather conveniently for the account holders.
Rocha Andrade explained that there was a bug in the system but stopped short of explaining why a computer appeared to have been running the Treasury with no oversight by human overseers.
"The Government learned in the summer of last year when it received the 2015 statistics, that that something was not right,” said Andrade, failing to recognise that six months have passed and only now is this matter being discussed.
"Compared with the April 2014 figures, transfers to tax havens had increased from around €370 million to almost €9 billion and in the face of such divergence, the government questioned the Tax Authority," which replied in November last year that "the numbers from 2011 to 2014 were not correct and that a systems failure had been detected."
Rocha Andrade claimed that there had been nothing that indicated political intervention, “As far as I am concerned, not even the original files transmitted by banks can be tampered with," failing to admit the possibility that someone had been commissioned to ensure that these vital transfer reports were blocked.
The missing data, and hence the list of people in a financial position to transfer a total of €10 billion out of the country without the Treasury being aware, was convenient for well-off account holders under a right wing government whose administration was characterised by currying favour with big business and wealthy individuals.
Núncio on the decision not to publish the statistics: "Probably not the most appropriate"
In an interview with TVI, the former Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Paulo Núncio, again took political responsibility for the decision not to make public the statistics on the offshore transfers.
Núncio said that perhaps it was not the "most appropriate" decision to keep secret the offshore transfer statistics between 2011 and 2014 as it "could harm the fight against tax evasion," and that he believed that "in certain situations, an excess of information can be counterproductive.”
Núncio added that he was responsible for the decision to withhold the statistics from the public. "It was my decision. It was not shared either with the Minister Vítor Gaspar or with the minister Maria Luís Albuquerque."
The former secretary of state refused to guess at a figure for the amount of tax that had been lost as "many of the transfers are not subject to taxation," but said that 97% of the transfers went to the blacklisted destination of Panama.
Rocha Andrade
