Under the Portuguese press law, any of the parties mentioned in a published article have the right to reply formally. The Resident is obliged to print the letter below
“In your issue dated Friday, 3th October 2008, The Resident – Algarve & Lisbon Edition published an article entitled “Bank dispute goes to court”. This article contains several untruths that smear my good name and reputation, and which I hereby want to be publicly corrected.
When your journalist, Cecília Pires, contacted me, I gave her information concerning an already public case involving Deutsche Bank and some of its promoters. I did not say that the DB promoters’ agencies “accuse” the bank of “stealing” their portfolios and of not paying them their respective commissions. Accusation in Portugal is the responsibility of the Ministério Público (Attorney General’s office), in court. What I said was that those promoters feel harmed by the bank in the fulfilment of several contract obligations.
Moreover, I was asked if I was speaking as an assessor to these promoters, to which I replied to your journalist that I was a consultant and not an assessor. I even emphasized the fact that I was not a representative or a spokesperson for them, but only the link to the newspaper, and if there was any interest, on the part of the editor, in publishing, I would be willing to establish the contact between the newspaper and the interested party.
Teresa Marques da Silva, Lisbon, 9th October, 2008
