With left-wingers supporting the government all calling for his dismissal/ resignation – and a damning documentary that claims he knew about the catastrophe of BES months before acting – Governor of the Bank of Portugal Carlos Costa has hit back at the gathering storm of criticism, saying it has “distorted what really happened”.
In a letter to Teresa Leal Coelho, president of the parliamentary commission on finances and administrative modernisation, Costa has said he is ready to “explain all the points” levelled against him to MPs in parliament, “in defence of the Bank of Portugal and to promote confidence” in the institution he leads.
With Expresso explaining the letter follows a telephone call that Costa made to Leal Coelho last week to much the same effect, TVI 24 has somewhat reduced the impact of Costa’s protestations, claiming to be in possession of an email which confirms that BdP “was informed of the serious liquidity crisis (at BES) and the alarming rush on deposits precisely” at the time in which Costa was “publicly guaranteeing that the bank was fine”.
It remains to be seen now when and how Costa “explains all the points” that have been levelled at him – both in the documentary screened by SIC last week, since then and even before.
Left Bloc coordinator Catarina Martins has been disputing Costa’s ability to run BdP since the Banif crisis of 2015 when she described him as Mr Magoo – “a wealthy short-statured retiree who gets into a series of comical situations as a result of his blindness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem (Wikipedia)”.
