Beleaguered Bank of Portugal – the country’s financial regulator under fire for so many banking resolutions – is now facing yet another parliamentary inquiry into its controversial decision-making.
This time, the probe will be on the handling of the Banif debacle – the resolution of a relatively small bank that threatens to cost almost as many billions as the ‘resolution’ of the much larger Banco Espírito Santo.
Financial website Dinheiro Vivo headlines the development as “parliament tightening the net” round Portugal’s central bank.
But as national media informs the country day-by-day, the net could not be much tighter.
Bank of Portugal is beset with legal actions and complaints over practically every decision it has made over the past few months.
Whether it is Banif, or Novo Banco, or BES, protests have been raining down like proverbial cats and dogs.
Observador today reports on court actions lodged by large investors caught up in BdP’s swingeing €2 billion bond dump – presented as an “accounting exercise” designed to prepare Novo Banco for sale – and in the meantime, 300 emigrants are lodging a similar action in Lisbon’s administrative court alleging “grave failings” in supervision.
Lawyer António Pereira de Almeida has told Lusa that one of the objectives of the emigrants’ action is block the sale of Novo Banco until the BdP’s bond dump has been properly adjudicated.
As for the legitimacy of BdP’s dump, he said it was “absurd, illegal and childish”.
