Government expects decision on appeal in swaps this year – publico

 
         

                 

                         
                     

                         

                 

 
 

The government hopes the London court still decide this year on the appeal filed by the State with the judgment which held valid the swaps sold by Santander. At a hearing taking place on Wednesday in parliament, the State Deputy Secretary for Treasury and Finance said that the decision may be known still “in the second half of this year.”

Asked by PSD, which required hearing, explain what strategy to resolve the tug-of-iron with the bank, Ricardo Mourinho Félix said that the lawyers who advise the state in this process have indicated to the Government that “the decision may still be known during 2016.” .

the appeal was presented in London on 24 March, after the judge who accompanied the action by the Santander have considered 20 days before that the contracts sold by the bank and accumulating potential losses EUR 1 800 million, are valid.

as the PUBLIC already reported, the state has until April 28 to present its case to the court of appeal. The Secretary of State said that Santander will then have until 12 May to counter the arguments of the four public transport companies that underwrote these swaps : (Lisbon Metro, Carris, Metro do Porto and STCP).

One of the resource pillars will be the claim by the State, that such contracts must be assessed in the light of Portuguese law, which was not taken into account in the sentence. Despite the judge’s finding that seven of the nine contracts would be voidable under national law, it was in favor of Santander because it considered that the swaps are not domestic agreements made between two parties operating in the Portuguese market.

Among discussions of past mistakes and strategies for the future, Mourinho Felix, who said he preferred that there is not what happened, did not fail to make a chronology of this case that has revealed a detail here unknown. According to the Secretary of State was that the executive previous PSD / CDS announced it would move court against Santander which made the bank brought an action in London, when the Ministry of Finance was already preparing a process for enter the Portuguese courts.

“at the end of April [2013], the process is already in the discussion phase with the prosecution, but on the 26th the former secretary of the Treasury [Mary Louis Albuquerque, which would follow soon become finance minister] made a press statement in which he said that did not reach agreement were considering entering actions in the Portuguese courts, “he said.

Mourinho Félix He assured that “Santander made the obvious.” In other words, “spent a week delivered the London court a process that has five pages” and thus, “removed the possibility of the process being delivered in Portugal”.

To be tried by a British court or a Portuguese could not make that much difference with the ruler himself took over. Especially because there are already national decisions on the swaps Santander sold to public companies under the umbrella of the Regional Government of Madeira in the Portuguese courts declare themselves incompetent to judge them.