The former Secretary of State for Tax Affairs, Paulo Núncio, has been called back to parliament to explain his role as a lawyer to the Venezuelan national oil company whose European branch, PDVSA Europe, transferred a significant part of the €7.8 billion that ended up in Panama, using BES as its bankers: Núncio was a Secretary of State at the time.
The row over the €10 billion in unmonitored offshore transfers between 2011 and 2014 brings Núncio into the spotlight once again as he failed to disclose his role as a lawyer with the law firm Garrigues, which was advising the Venezuelan state oil company, nor did he disclose his involvement in suppressing data about capital outflows from the Madeira free zone.
Núncio is linked to the registration of an estimated 120 new companies in the Madeira free zone and when in public office he did not published the statistics for offshore transfers out of Madeira.
When he was in parliament explaining the circumstances surrounding the vanishing €10 billion that left the country without the taxman’s knowledge, Paulo Núncio said that he did not publish the transfer statistics for two reasons: first, he felt that "it could give some sort of advantage to tax evaders," and secondly, because the information sent was comprehensive and did not distinguish between company transfers and those made by individuals.
These feeble excuses for his failing to pass on the transfer data to the Tax Authority, so it could check that taxes due had been paid, were made to parliament without MPs knowing Núncio’s involvement with the Venezuelan oil company which made multi-billion euro transfers, nor his involvement in Madeira where it may well have been in his interests to enable transfers from client companies in the free zone to be made ‘with no questions asked.’
The Socialists now want Nuncio to explain himself: "It is urgent to clarify the political responsibilities, so we will call Paulo Núncio and Paulo Ralha (president of the Union of Tax Workers) to parliament," announced the socialist MP João Paulo Correia.
"When Paul Núncio was heard in the Parliamentary Committee on Finance and Administrative Modernisation, he did not disclose any of this information. These facts are new, and the Socialist Party considers it essential to clarify this situation, since the statistics were not published by the Tax Authority precisely at the time that transfers were made from the oil company."
Núncio will have had the weekend to work out his next move but seems, like so many of Portugal’s politicians, to have mixed business with public duty.
