The secret’s out: how former “boss-of-all-this” at BES has managed to survive all these months and years after his billion euro empire was ‘impounded’ and properties confiscated.
Ricardo Salgado – the man on €3 million bail relating to two investigations into alleged financial corruption – has been living on a very comfortable pension that appears to have dodged the rigours of judicial process.
How comfortable? Well, seven times more comfortable than the €11,500 to which Novo Banco is now hoping to see him ‘limited’.
Yes, that makes a monthly income while on remand of no less than €90,000 (before tax) per month.
Meantime, Novo Banco has been desperately trying to make ends meet.
Says negocios online, it wants to limit not only Salgado, but all ex-BES ‘old cronies’: including José Manuel Espírito Santo, António Souto, Jorge Martins, Rui Silveira, José Maria Ricciardi, João Freixa, Stanislas Ribes, Amílcar Morais Pires and Joaquim Goes.
The nine men have been raking in comfortable pension dues as they ‘serenely await’ the tortuous course of Portuguese justice – which three years on still shows no sign of bringing the BES case to any kind of imminent conclusion.
Also enjoying major-league payouts are another nine, whose pension limits will see them reduced to DOUBLE the amount being requested for Salgado et al.
Explains negocios online, these nine former financial VIPs – among them one-time economy minister Manuel Pinho – will have to see their pensions defined according to the “maximum ceiling for Novo Banco’s highest paid directors”.
In other words, any limitations will still see them receiving around €23,542 per month.
Novo Banco’s bid for these new limitations has entered Lisbon’s Tribunal de Comarca, says negocios online, but as yet there has been no answer.
BCP Millennium has also had no answer to its bid to limit pension payments to a former president, lodged seven years ago, says the website.
This means the man in question has contentedly continued raking in €107,000 per month, €60,000 of which comes from the BCP pension fund.
