The Government, Estradas de Portugal and owners of the road concessions involved in 'ruinous' Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), all entered into a secret agreement to get around the Court of Auditors rejection of the controversial funding scheme.
The Judicial Police at last is investigating these PPP contracts and has evidence of deals done behind closed doors, to the detriment of Portugal's long-suffering public.
The existence of an agreement between the financing banks, the subcontractors and Estradas de Portugal was set up to compensate the concession holders “without reservations or conditions," reads the initial police report.
This "secret agreement" came into being after the Court of Auditors rejected the financial model proposed for the road building programme.
Those involved, sneakily managed to load an additional €705 million onto the cost of the PPP contracts, money which then became “an additional and disguised form of remuneration for subcontractors," says the PJ report.
The complex PPP contracts long have been viewed as ‘ruinous’ and have not given the nation’s taxpayers anything approaching ‘value for money.’
