Left-wingers Bloco de Esquerda have told the government that the issue of millionaire salaries awarded to directors of troubled State Bank CGD is by no means closed.
Dubbing it “purely and simply unacceptable”, the party has affirmed its “integral opposition” to monthly pay cheques that are around 57 times higher than the national minimum wage.
Indeed, Diário de Notícias has suggested the bank’s president António Domingos could actually end up taking home €634,000 a year, with all the “variables” taken into account – which would translate into a salary 85 times larger than the national minimum wage.
DN explains these massive earnings were “made possible” because the government approved a law – already rubber stamped by President Marcelo – “that did away with salary limits of directors’ salaries at CGD”.
“Attempts to alter” this law have, up till now, failed, the paper adds.
Indeed, prime minister Costa has been defending the move in a public session organised to explain the budget in which one member of the public described it as “a scandal”.
Costa’s argument was that CGD salaries have to be on a par with those offered elsewhere in the banking sector.
“It is not possible that directors of the Caixa should have salaries along the lines of that of the prime minister”, he said. “Unfortunately for the prime minister, the salary is very much inferior of that which exists in the bank. But I am not complaining because I chose to be here”.
This somehow skirted the point that CGD is a bank that needs a €5 billion bailout, and is about to sack over 2000 staff members (click here).
PHOTO: BE’s Catarina Martins who claims the subject of CGD salaries is by no means closed as far as Bloco de Esquerda is concerned.
