The management of Douro Azul, the Oporto area’s most influential and successful boat owner and operator, has demanded that parliamentary immunity for MEP Ana Gomes be withdrawn so she can answer for her comments in the press that the company was involved in corruption.
The European Parliament received the official request following a formal complaint from the Douro Azul group about statements Gomes had made about the company’s purchase and subsequent sale of the Atlântida ferry.
Douro Azul won the bidding for the Atlântida in July, 2014 and completed the deal that September for the bargain price of €8.7 million, payable to the State.
Late that year, Douro Azul’s boss Mario Ferreira said that the board has "decided to give a new direction to the vessel" after he claimed to have received numerous requests from international operators to buy the boat.
The ferry had been built in the Viana do Castelo shipyards for the Regional Government of the Açores which wriggled out of the order saying that the ship was not fast enough - by just 1.22 knots - and that anyway, it was a year late. The delay was blamed on the changes requested while the ship was under construction, including that the vessel should have twice the number of suites and cabins, and other modifications.
The government was fed up with paying €2.5 million a year in insurance and other fees for a boat that just took up space and sent it off for sale by auction.
The first successful bidder offered €13 million but the unheard of company, Thesarco Shipping, was found to be run by Captain Evangelos Saravanos who had a long history of breaching various maritime laws, several cases of abandoning crew and the deliberate sinking of ships in waters off Russia, Sri Lanka, Algeria and Greece.
Saravanos failed to complete on the purchase and Duoro Azul was, as second bidder, offered the ship at the price it has offered, €8.75 million, substantially less than the €50 million that the Regional Government of the Açores had contracted to pay and several millions less than the failed Thesarco Shipping bid.
Duoro Azul announced in late 2014 that it had decided to sell the ship. Meanwhile, the Viana de Castelo shipyard ended up continuing to pay instalments on the €40 million in advanced payments that it had received from the regional government of the Açores but went bust in 2014.
There was suspicion at the time that Thesarco Shipping was set up to bid and then paid to disappear, leaving the way open for Duoro Azul in second place to bag the ship for a bargain.
Mário Ferreira, now says that even though Dr. Ana Gomes plays an important role in Portuguese society, the MEP can’t go around making false accusations.
Claiming that the purchase was entirely above board and the later sale “was carried out with the greater legality," the businessman pointed out that "the purchase at a public auction was, as Ana Gomes knows, audited by a member of the Public Prosecutor's Office and it all happened with the greatest transparency."
The Atlântida was purchased by Norweigan shiping company Hurtigruten in July 2015, and renamed the MS Spitsbergen.
Ana Gomes, not one to be deterred from her mission by protestations of honesty and transparency, said that she will explain to the European parliamentary committee how she has acted "in compliance with her duties of citizenship and her mandate as a European parliamentarian, in this and other anti-corruption processes and economic crimes organised against the interests of the Portuguese State."
"I hereby declare my intention to become an assistant to the ongoing investigation process by the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action on the sale and resale of the Atlântida," added Gomes.
What has annoyed Douro Azul’s management are statements made by Gomes in April 2016, which Mário Ferreira considers offensive and slanderous, in reaction to a statement from the Attorney General's Office about the sale of the Atlântida.
At the time, Ana Gomes stated in the press that the investigation was "a sign that something is stirring in a case of flagrant corruption," involving the sale of the Atlântida ferryboat to the Douro Azul Group. Gomes did not say the Douro Azul was corrupt but that the whole circumstance surrounding the ship was mired in corruption.
This was taken by Ferreira as Gomes making "serious insinuations and accusations while knowing that these did not correspond to the truth."
The European Parliament's President, António Tajani, announced today that he had received the request for the waiver of Gomes’s parliamentary immunity which had been sent in by the Office of the Attorney General in Peso da Régua, Vila Real, following a complaint made almost a year ago by the companies Mystic Invest, SGPS,SA, Mystic Cruises, SA and Douro Azul, SA, which has been forwarded to the Legal Affairs Committee, ‘for analysis and recommendation.’
For the full story of the Atlântida, click HERE
