The HLC and the Conegil group went downhill for a decade, with tens of millions of euros of debt. The Constrope, the Congevia, the Gigabeira have pending insolvency proceedings. Lena group was on the brink the abyss in 2010 when José Sócrates found him a lifeline in Venezuela. In common, these companies and the public works sector groups have, or have had, the name of Carlos Manuel dos Santos Silva, the mysterious engineer Belmonte who is arrested and is suspected of practicing various crimes, along with former Prime minister. But unlike the companies that closed doors without paying wages, or dismissed many of its workers, Santos Silva has not stopped enriching.
Proof of this, in addition to EUR million that prosecutors found in its accounts, of which researchers suspect that belong to Socrates, is the purchase of luxury apartment where the former prime minister lived in Paris and the three floors that belonged . the mother friend
The fortune accumulated by businessman certainly has to do with some large contracts to which your friends will not be strange – for projects for Venezuela, but also the business of landfills and works of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the time Socrates and Armando Vara protected them these areas. However, beyond these major operations, your personal success is linked to a strategy based on the dispersal of its interests in many companies and their links to many other right people in the places and at the right times.
More than 60 companies
Since the second half of the 80s in Teixoso and Canhoso, two neighboring villages on the outskirts of Covilha, which he once had more than a dozen Employers on floor housing and two stores, its business activity started by the districts of Castelo Branco and Guarda. Your market itself was (and still is) the public works, be they camarárias – with great emphasis on the municipalities of Belmonte, Covilhã and White Castle – the old National Road Authority, or school, in particular the University of Beira Interior (UBI).
For cameras, beyond the political affinity, particularly with the mayors of the PS in the region, had friends like Jose Socrates, then coach of the city of Covilha, and many colleagues. In the regional offices of the National Road Authority came to have two district directors as partners.
One of them, José Gomes, PSD leader in the Guard, was a founder of Conegil, a construction company that would become central in the career of Santos Silva, when it came to dominate it in mid 1990. commercial information reports according consulted by the PUBLIC, the two engineers still share capital of Rumo – a small business projects established in 1988 and that, as many of the more than 60 controlled by Santos Silva, remains at its annual accounts despite having no activity.
The other, Albano Costa Oliveira, founded with him in 1987, his first company. They called it Anak, Engineering and Architecture Ldª and have always had a large part of its turnover in road projects. Albano Oliveira recently sold his share to his brother Santos Silva, the doctor António José, but it is not here that Carlos Manuel makes money. In the last three years, the company, which continues to have the Portugal Roads main client, always declared losses totaling 363,000 euros. The partnership with Albano Oliveira, however, remains by Analysis Note, an engineering firm that the two have already opened in 2009 in Lisbon, and we hardly making since 2011.
Among the good customer Santos Silva has long figure also UBI. For more than year and a half in 1985 and 1986, he himself held the post of Director of Technical Services and the Rectory for 15 years, the rector was his first cousin Manuel José dos Santos Silva, current president of the Municipal Assembly of Covilha, elected by PS. With regard to schools, however, the large vein came much later, after Socrates’ arrival the Prime Minister with the business provided by the School Park.
Project, build and monitor
One of the strengths of the entrepreneur lived from the beginning in control the entire production process of public works: design, the project management, actual construction and supervision. Each company was devoted mainly to one of these activities, although almost all of them could do the rest. In practice, by multiplying companies with different names, although often headquartered in the same location, Santos Silva could often be it the project, manage, build and oversee the major public works were awarded to it.
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