The former head of a Banco Espírito Santo offshoot has been placed under house arrest after being interviewed by a criminal examining judge.
The Attorney General's Office confirmed the house arrest of João Alexandre Silva, former director of BES Madeira and former representative of Banco Espírito Santo in Venezuela.
The authorities raided homes, banks and companies in Lisbon and Madeira a week ago in an investigation into the Venezuelan state owned oil company’s ill-fated investment in a Grupo Espírito Santo bond issue just before the bank collapsed in 2014.
"The defendant was presented by the Public Prosecution Service to the Criminal Investigation Judge, who decided to apply coercive measures to stay in the house and to prohibit contacts, in particular with other defendants in the case," the prosecution service said in a statement.
João Alexandre Silva "was indicted for acts that could be included in the crimes of corruption of international public agents, money laundering, and active and passive corruption in the private sector."
The €365 million bond purchase was covered by two ‘letters of comfort’ signed by Ricardo Salgado and José Manuel Espírito Santo in the summer of 2014. The bank guaranteed to the investor, Petróleos de Venezuela, the reimbursement of the investment in Grupo Espírito Santo companies that already were insolvent.
The Public Prosecutor intends to investigate whether BES set up a financial scheme that would facilitate money laundering for Petróleos de Venezuela, one of the bank's largest clients.
An estimated $11 billion has been stolen from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA and the investigation is looking at how this was channelled through Banco Espírito Santo between 2009 and 2014.
