Bank of Portugal officials said Ricardo Salgado should go, nine months before the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo.
It now seems clear that the governor of the Bank of Portugal, Carlos Costa,(pictured) kept information from the committee of inquiry into the BES collapse.
A large file of documents released by SIC on Wednesday evening, proves that the regulator had detailed knowledge of what had been going on at Grupo Espírito Santo and Banco Espírito Santo since 2013, well before the BES collapse in August 2014.
In the first file, an internal Bank of Portugal memo signed by managers questioned the continuing employment of four directors of BES, including that of Ricardo Salgado the bank’s chief executive.
In the November 2013 internal note, managers said that the Bank of Portugal was letting time slip by without taking action. The possibility of Ricardo Salgado being removed immediately is outlined in a clear and transparent way.
But Carlos Costa stated to the committee of inquiry into the BES case that he had not questioned the suitability of Ricardo Salgado staying at the head of BES because he (Calos Costa) legally was prevented from doing so.
The Bank of Portugal internal memo concluded the opposite and that Salgado should go. He eventually was forced out seven months later in June 2014, two months before the bank went bust.
The second document is a detailed assessment of the results of the evaluation of 20 BES branches in 2011, including in the French subsidiary and the Angolan subsidiary, which showed high risks in the area of internal control and findings of covert activities.
In June 2014, three years after the report was issued, the public would find out that BES Angola had lost control of USD5.7 billion in loans granted to various clients, some of them representatives of the so-called Angolan elite.
