As the parliamentary inquiry gets underway, promising to “fling the doors wide open” on the Banco Espírito Santo banking scandal, Portugal’s former national football team manager Carlos Queiroz has talked about the “scandalous” way Espírito Santo Bankers Dubai plundered his account of more than half his life’s savings.
Along with the multi-millionaire president of FC Porto, Jorge Pinto da Costa, Queiroz is highly critical of the way the government and Bank of Portugal handled the “good bank/bad bank” carve-up.
He is appealing to others “abused and defrauded”, as he feels he has been, to join up with him and fight.
“I had savings that were part of my territorial reserve,” he told reporters. “I am a citizen who has been scandalously stripped of many years of work!
“Under the huge pressure coming from Lisbon, the commercial director of ES Bankers Dubai went into my account, took out a fortune… removed more than half my life’s work, and sent it to the owners of Rioforte!
“He put funds that I had been saving to support my retirement into Rioforte in a fraudulent and abusive fashion.”
Despite the quaint terminology, Queiroz is on the warpath, as is Pinto da Costa who has gone public about the “trickery” that has seen him losing “significant” sums of money.
According to tabloid Correio da Manhã, both men are talking about millions of euros.
Queiroz particularly is unwilling to let the matter rest. “If there are other people out there suffering similar circumstances as I because of the bank in Dubai, they should get in touch with me.
The owners of the Espírito Santo bank in Dubai are the same as those who ran the Espírito Santo group in Portugal.”
Queiroz had an unceremonious departure from his job as national team coach in 2010 – being kicked out after a series of poor performances and implication, later withdrawn, in a player ‘doping’ scandal.
He has been the manager of Iran’s national team since 2011. However, Queiroz gained prominence, and was most successful, as Sir Alex Ferguson’s right-hand man in Manchester United for a short period between 2002 and 2003 and then again between 2004 and 2008.
Although he did coach major teams such as Sporting CP and Real Madrid, he never reached the same notoriety that he did when assisting ‘Fergie’ in England.
