CGD. Centeno is heard in the parliament today – the Observer

The minister of Finance, Mário Centeno, will, this Wednesday, to the Committee on Budget and Finance to respond to the questions of deputies about the situation of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), an entity that has been under the spotlight media productions in the past few months. After having had a decisive role in the drafting of the Strategic Plan and the recapitalisation of the state-owned bank, António Domingues 'slammed the door' in November to the leadership of the CGD, just four months after to have assumed officially the position, a waiver consummated at the end of last year.

However, waits for 'green light' of the European Central bank (ECB) to the new directors of CGD, who will have Rui Vilar as chairman and Paulo Macedo as chief executive officer.

During the months in which he was in command of the public bank, Domingues had to deal with several controversies right from the beginning the charges that would have had access to privileged information of the CGD when it was still the administrator of the rival private bank BPI. This was followed by the question relating to the delivery of declarations of income, which involved the administration led by António Domingues that made run much ink around the management team of the bank, with several administrators to retreat from the positions and with the Government to invite Paulo Macedo, former minister of Health of the Government of Passos Coelho, to assume the presidency of CGD.

the Face of the evolution of the events, the opposition parties have expressed the desire to listen to Centeno and Domingues in the parliament in the framework of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the management of CGD, which is in progress. However, the parties supporting the Government of António Costa not approved these hearings, so that both those responsible were called to the Commission for Budget, Finance, and Administrative Modernisation (COFMA).

Domingues appeared at the beginning of the month before the members that are part of the COFMA, having said on the occasion that he decided to resign from the bank because the greater part of their team did and did not have the conditions to manage, after the debate that has been generated.

"what made me had fired? Very simple, I would be without a team. Of the 11 members of the Board of Directors resigned and seven, if you consider the Fiscal Council, on 15 resigned nine. I have no team would have difficulty in managing the Box," he said in the hearing that took place on 4 January.

Domingues said that they could question it because you have not chosen a new team, continuing to the front of the institution, responding so that the manner in which the debate about the CGD and its team was led not give conditions to keep their job. "One of the first responsibilities of the manager of a company is to know if it has the conditions to manage and I, in my best judgment, I understood that it was not able to do", and considered it.