Council of Lisbon accused of benefit GES projects – publico

                 

                         
                     

                         
                     

                         

                 

 
                         

The feasibility of another of the four major real estate transactions that the Espírito Santo Group (GES) began preparing for a decade in the vicinity of the Park of Nations is finding strong reservations on the camera and the Municipal Assembly of Lisbon.

                     

                         At the head are favoring suspicions that group, through a detailed plan for which the original authorship belongs to Councilman Manuel Salgado, cousin of Ricardo Salgado.

Four years after the camera and the House have approved the Plan Detail of the Matinha (PPM) thanks to the votes in favor of socialist majority and its allies Citizens for Lisbon (CPL), with the opposition and the abstention of other parties, the zone of urbanization contract received the green light from the municipal executive in mid-February with only the votes of PS.

Although it is an essential tool for the implementation of the plan, the proposal was this time with the abstention of the CPL, which joined your questions to the opposition. And at the meeting of the Planning Committee, where the contract negotiated between the camera and the Gesfimo – a subsidiary of bankrupt Rioforte, of GES, which manages the fund Fimes East, created by the same GES in 2004 and owner of most of the land – if currently examining, as we hear Members of the PSD and the CPL to say that the agreement “clearly favors” that fund, “to the detriment of other owners and the city’s interests.”

Who did not participate in the discussion and vote on the proposals drawn up for the services it protected – which is far from wanting to say that was not involved in the process – was Councilman Urbanism, Manuel Salgado. Reason: Matinha the plan was you-commissioned in 2004 by Gesfimo – Holy Ghost Brothers SA. All parts that compose it, stating in detail what can be done on site, are of his own and the team who ran the risk workshop – that was the main shareholder – and now being coordinated by one of the children when in 2007 part of the first executive António Costa.

With about 25 hectares, nestled between the Northern line and the Tagus River, and across the boundary of the Park of Nations (Av. Marechal Gomes da Costa) and the area of ​​the former factory Silver Arm Military, the vast area of ​​Matinha was in large part occupied by the middle of the last decade with what was left of the old factory gas belonging to Lisboagás. Although the Municipal Master Plan (PDM) classify that and other areas in the east as Industrial area / port, the changes induced by the Expo-98 took the camera, then in 2000, to move forward with an ambitious development plan of the waterfront (PUZRO ) from the Park of Nations to Santa Apolonia.

Land already worth over 45 million
The idea was, according to the city council discourse of the time, consolidating the connection of Nations Park to the rest of the city, framing the transformation of disabled and derelict industrial sites in areas “integrated and quality”, and responding to the expectations created to real estate. It was then that large groups such as GES, companies like Inland, Luis Filipe Vieira, or Obriverca, however bankrupt, then bet on strong buying Terenos.

So that still gave PUZRO started, and already the Middle Fimes was negotiating with Lisboagás part of the Matinha terrain. Soon this year – the same as the camera began to prepare the launch of the PPM, the first of several that should realize the PUZRO guidelines in smaller areas – concluded with the promise Lisboagás a purchase and sale agreement of more than 16 hectares.

But in 2005, when the city, then most PSD, approved the terms of reference of the PPM, the Fimes was not yet own any of the 25 hectares of the plan area. Nevertheless, it was the Gesfimo, his representative, who hired that same year the risk to the plan with the “monitoring” of municipal services.

In 2007, Salgado was chosen by António Costa for Alderman Urbanism and one of his son, Thomas Salgado, a partner at Risk, took over the coordination of the work of PPM. The following year, the camera has abandoned the idea of ​​completing the PUZRO normally pursuing the development of PPM. In October 2010, the socialist majority and CPL approved all its parts, and the Fimes still at that time, according to the documents of the plan, holds only 1.4 hectares of 25.2 included in the plan area.