More than half of the recent injection of taxpayers’ cash into Novo Banco will be swallowed up by the insolvency of Ongoing, the company run by Nuno Vasconcellos and Rafael Mora.
Ongoing owes €440 million to Novo Banco, which was meant to inherit only the ‘good’ assets of BES, and another €230 million to BCP.
These are the new black holes blasted into the accounts of the two banks by Vasconcellos and Mora who collaborated with Ricardo Salgado and BES in strengthening control in Portugal Telecom and in the construction of a network of influence in politics, business, media and the secret services.
The newspaper said that 55% of the €800 million injection, recently handed over by the Resolution Fund to Novo Banco, is to cover unrecoverable losses at Ongoing.
This injection of taxpayers’ cash was made through a public loan to the Resolution Fund, which will only be reimbursed after several decades by Portugal’s remaining banks. The public yet again is bailing out private businesses for many generations to come.
Nuno Vasconcellos and Rafael Mora marked a short but decisive era of the Portuguese economy, before the financial crisis, the Troika bailout and the collapse of BES and Portugal Telecom. The company was given loans by BES to build up a stake of 10% in Portugal Telecom.
As soon as the markets contracted and PT ceased to distribute generous dividends, the fortunes of Ongoing, that owned Diário Económico and had more than 6% of Impresa (owner of SIC Expresso), turned sour.
Nuno Vasconcellos also had personal loans at BCP, but when the bank attempted to collect these debts, the businessman only has one jet-ski in his own name.
