As a date has finally been set for the opening of a government commission of inquiry into the BES banking scandal, news comes that José Maria Ricciardi – leader of BES International (BESI) and cousin of former BES boss Ricardo Salgado – is “collaborating” with criminal investigators and making their job “a lot quicker”.
As national tabloid Correio da Manhã points out, this is further emphasising the “good cousin/bad cousin” scenario – very much like one created by the government when it separated BES’ toxic assets into a “good bank” last August, leaving “bad bank” BES with millions of euros worth of debt.
CM stresses that Ricciardi’s role in the collapse of the whole Espírito Santo financial empire is “far from clear” as he sets himself up as the investigation’s White Knight.
Giving Ricciardi one of their famous “thumbs down”, CM’s inference is that no matter what people have done, families should stick together.
Both sharing the middle names of “Espírito Santo Silva”, the men have been at loggerheads for a very long time. Ricciardi tried to wrestle leadership of BES away from Salgado months before the bank’s true (disastrous) situation came fully to light.
Now he is apparently busy supplying the Justice Ministry with “various documents” cataloguing a fraudulent financing scheme through Swiss financial services company Eurofin.
His help is “allowing the Public Ministry to accelerate its investigation into the management irregularities of the Espírito Santo Group”, writes CM.
Meantime, the parliamentary commission into the scandal is due to start its inquiries on Monday, November 17. Over 100 people are due to be called, among them Finance Minister Maria Luís Albuquerque, former Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar and Governor of the Bank of Portugal, Carlos Costa.
The inquiry has been given a time-limit of four months, but it is very likely that members will request an extension.
