Former minister Pedro Nuno Santos will be heard in parliament this Thursday for the second time in a few days, now in the TAP investigative committee, about the controversial compensation of Alexandra Reis, who motivated her departure from the government.
After months of silence and with his mandate suspended at his request, the former Minister of Infrastructure and Housing was heard last week at the request of the PSD at the Committee on Economy, Public Works, Spatial Planning and Housing about the situation of TAP in the period between 2015 and 2023.
Pedro Nuno Santos resigned after the compensation of 500,000 euros paid to former TAP administrator Alexandra Reis, who was Secretary of State for Finance when Correio da Manhã reported that payment, to which she was not entitled, on December 24, 2022.
After saying that he had not been informed of the compensation – and after his resignation – Pedro Nuno Santos clarified in a statement that he, the then Secretary of State for Infrastructure Hugo Mendes and the Chief of Staff Maria Antónia Araújo “have no memory that they were aware of the compensation and that the minister gave “political authorization to close the process”.
At last week’s hearing, the ex-governor assumed there were “difficult months of waiting as the will to respond was strong”, but added that the issues leading up to his departure from government would have to wait for his visit to the government. Commission of Inquiry TAP.
Pedro Nuno Santos answered questions about the reconfiguration of TAP shareholders after the privatization of 2015, the so-called Airbus funds, emergency aid to the airline in 2020, after the covid-19 pandemic and the 55 million euros paid to David Neeleman to leave the company.
The former minister argued that if the veracity of the evidence cited in the audit of the Airbus deal conducted by former private shareholder of TAP David Neeleman is confirmed, pointing to the possibility that the airline is paying above market price, then you must “demand that contracts be reviewed”.
As for the 55 million paid to the former private shareholder, Pedro Nuno Santos said they agreed to a “meeting point” between the parties that disagreed, to avoid litigation.
Pedro Nuno Santos also stressed that he was “very proud of the government’s work” to “rescue TAP”, having managed to prove that the airline, as a “public company, can make a profit”.
“It was no coincidence, because in the year in which TAP made a profit, we also managed to make that CP profit for the first time in its history. There is no longer a government, there is no longer a minister who can boast in the past 50 years on the fact that he has left his duties at TAP and CP and is making a profit”he stressed.
Source: DN
