In a country where it has become glaringly obvious that the more one owes, the less one ends up paying, former BES patriarch Ricardo Salgado has been talking to the US financial press, saying that while the case into the collapse of his family bank ‘drags on’, he is busy writing his memoirs – and fighting to restore his honour.
The 74-year-old former CEO told Bloomberg: “I’m fighting for the honour of being who I was and for the honour of my family. To apologize would have been the easiest formula to free myself from responsibility publicly. I think I have the responsibility to fight for truth to be restored”.
On bail of €4 million and still living in the opulent family home in Cascais – where even the road is named after his family – Salgado said that “obviously” he is “sorry for the clients who lost their savings” – many of them who have been reduced to living in penury – but he blames the Bank of Portugal’s “resolution decision”.
“Clients were harmed by the resolution measure, it wasn’t me who opted for the resolution”, he told Bloomberg which stresses that despite being banned from working the banking sector for 10 years, and with a “status similar to that of a suspect in a money-laundering investigation”, Salgado “denies any wrongdoing” and is appealing the accusations that have been stacked up against him.
“When he’s not preparing his defense, Salgado spends part of his days writing his memoirs and says he’s reading a lot and spending time with his family”, says the paper, adding: “He says “envy” might be partly responsible for his group’s demise”.
Alluding to the much publicised nickname of “o dono disso tudo” (the boss of all this) Salgado says that he has “no doubt that the story was created with the goal of attacking me.”
Bloomberg’s report did refer to Ricardo Ângelo, the campaigning dentist from Mangualde who has led the fight for compensation for BES/ GES commercial paper investors, and who believes Salgado isn’t the only figure in the financial debacle who should apologize.
“They should all apologise”, Ângelo said. “Clients were deceived. The primary responsibility is Ricardo Salgado’s and secondly the (BdP) resolution was badly managed and we suffered with that. It should never have happened”.
Almost three years since BES collapsed no charges have been formalised against anyone.
