More than half of the €10 billion in offshore transfers that failed to appear in the government statistics between 2011 and 2014, supposedly due to a computer error, came from Banco Espírito Santo.
A source in the tax department, who has chosen to remain anonymous, said the amount of money leaving BES “was enormous” and was disproportionate to transfers from other banks.
"At issue," writes O Jornal Económico today, "are the amounts that the bank's clients, mostly companies, sent to offshore accounts in the two years before the bank's resolution," i.e. before the bank went bust in August 2014.
The transfers were declared by Novo Banco following the BES collapse in 2014. The total transferred from BES accounts was over €5 billion and these transfers were not subject to any investigation by the Tax Authority.
The Ministry of Finance has declined to offer any explanation: "We cannot comment on the financial entities involved.”
On Wednesday, the current Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Rocha Andrade, stated to parliament that there was no control over the €10 billion that was transferred offshore because the details were not known to the Treasury. He blamed everything on a (rather fortunate) computer glitch that apparently nobody had picked up on, despite the offshore transfer report being a mandatory annual procedure since 2010.
Before BES went bust, it became abundantly clear that money was being withdrawn and transferred to other banks in Portugal and abroad.
The suspicion here is that BES directors warned friends and family to get their money out of BES quickly as the bank was heading for a fall.
The detail of the €5 billion transferred by BES account holders, when published, will highlight the types of businesses and individuals that had the astounding foresight to take their money out and out it somewhere safer.
Maria Luís Albuquerque, the Minister of Finance from 2013 to 2015 is being targeted by the Socialist Government to explain whether, and if so 'why,' she withheld information from opposition MPs regarding to the undisclosed transfers.
Already indications are emerging that Albuquerque could have known all about these funds being sent to tax havens, without disclosing this to the opposition.
