The Central Criminal Investigation Court has ordered the seizure of most of the remaining €39,000-a-month pension payment made to Ricardo Salgado, the former president of BES and Grupo Espírito Santo.
The preemptive seizure was made as part of the various investigations Salgado faces after everything went so horrible wrong for the 'Master of all he Surveys.'
The law covering pension seizures allows for an amount always to remain payable so that the recipient can afford to pay for basics. Point 3 of article 738 of the Code of Civil Procedure states that two-thirds of a pension is untouchable but this protection has a limit of three times the national minimum wages, which in this case is €1,671 a month - hardly enough to keep Sagado's taylor from pressing for payment.
Judge Carlos Alexandre has asked for a report on the net amount Salgado has been scraping by on and then he can firm up on the figure to be deducted until Salgado's name has been cleared, which is unlikely.
The former president of Banco Espírito Santo currently has a reduced pension of about €39,000 from the BES pension fund. This should have been €90,000-a-month but already cuts have been made due to the probability of Salgado's guilt.
At the end of September 2017, Correio da Manhã reported that Salgado's pension had been cut by 25% from €52,437 to €39,162.
The purpose of these various legal moves is to guarantee any damages payable by the directors of BES and GES if State losses were caused by "advantages obtained by criminal activity."
The Prosecutor's Office estimates that compensation payable by directors in the BES/GES collapse could reach €1.6 billion.
The first attempt to cut the pensions of Ricardo Salgado, other members of the Espírito Santo family and former directors of BES, took place when Vítor 'Crome Dome' Bento was running Novo Banco, the entity that replaced BES.
This cut was successful, but not for long as Salgado’s pension later tripled, from November 2015, going from €29,000 to €90,000-a-month after the 2014 Bento cut was reversed.
Bento had argued that former directors of Espírito Santo Group companies, under article 402 of the code of commercial companies, could not receive more than current directors, which implied a cut of €60,000-a-month to Salgado’s pension.
The result of these moves has been to reduce the multi-millionaire's visible spending power but, having been involved in dodgy dealings for decades, it is fully expected that Salgado has made provision for any future he might have, if he escapes jail, by secreting money away far from the taxman and the courts.
