Documents consulted by Financial Times confirm that Banco Espirito Santo (BES) used a subsidiary, ES Bank Panama to finance the Holy Spirit International (ESI) in a critical period for the business group, without access to markets to finance (and pay their debts).
On July 23 the ESI, the holding which dominates the financial district of Espírito Santo family (and owns 25% of BES via ESFG), delivered in the Luxembourg Commercial Court an application for controlled management .
Financial Times had access to documents that show that between 2012 and 2014 the Espírito Santo Group (GES) resorted to financing transactions not declared in order to go up funds in ES Panama Bank, a subsidiary of ESFG, the direct shareholder control of BES. Transactions intended to buy debt of ESI and other family companies, all of them insolvent, which allowed them to continue to develop the activity. In December 2013, the Bank of Portugal (BoP) had already determined that the liability of GES reached EUR 7 billion.
According to the British daily writes, the situation raises “new” questions “about the role of bop “as supervisor and in particular about his surveillance action to a group” who starred in one of the largest financial debacles in Europe. “This news appears on the main page of the website the FT illustrated with a picture of Ricardo Salgado masked villain, removal of posters around the streets of Lisbon (one photographic montage that reminds the Beagle Boys to rob Scrooge).
“The Bank of Panama connected the Holy Spirit existed almost exclusively to purchase debt issued by ESI and its subsidiaries Rioforte Brothers and Holy Spirit, according to a report of the directors of ES Bank, “the Financial Times .
The June 21 this year already PUBLIC revealed that the BoP was carrying out investigations on the BES in the USA, in New York and Miami, with the aim, among several subjects, to assess whether the institution acted so diligent before suspicions of money laundering or other illegal activity, in transactions involving accounts in Latin America, where the two banks BES held: ES ES Venezuela and Panama. Inspections Supervisor looking for computer support associated with suspicious transactions and also ensure that the GES did not resort to its Latin American vehicles for finance companies in its universe.
A few days later, on July 3 revealed the PUBLIC that financial authorities in Miami, where BES has a subsidiary, the Bank ES Miami also were investigating the banking of the Florida Association for the movements related to the activity of the group in Venezuela and Panama.
The GES common to the various entities owned managers as Jorge Holy Spirit. Another name that comes associated with various institutions is to ax the Cross, for whom Ricardo Salgado sent the guilt of concealment of EUR 1.3 billion in the accounts of ES International, headquartered in Switzerland.
On the eve of the arrest of Ricardo Salgado to testify, culminating in its constitution as a defendant, the PUBLIC reported that the American financial supervisors had returned to Miami to investigate BES operations with subsidiaries BES Panama and Venezuela.
On July 17, the central financial authority Panama took control of the institution and sacked the board of directors of ES Panama, decreeing a period of 30 days, extendable by a further 30 for the institution to resolve the situation “with some large customers “, but never revealed the terms of your order. The findings that the Portuguese authorities will still develop versed on the accounts offshore open in Panama that allowed supposedly the builder José Guilherme Ricardo Salgado pay the € 8.5 million for fees for consultancy and advisory services to its business services in Angola.
It should be noted that several funds Anglo-Saxon investment that bought shares of BES in the period before the intervention already made public statements that are dealing ahead with lawsuits against the Portuguese authorities. The Government, through Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister, Maria Luis Albuquerque, Finance Minister and spokesman for the executive, Marques Guedes, as well as the governor of bop, Carlos Costa, and the President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva, emerged on the eve of the intervention to ensure the soundness of the institution, which would eventually collapse on the first week-end of August.
No comments:
Post a Comment