Forty-nine hearings later, ending this Friday with Finance Minister Fernando Medina, TAP’s Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) is now entering a new phase, that of drafting the final report, headed by PS deputy Ana Paula Bernardo.
How it all started?
On December 24, 2022, the Mail tomorrow news that Alexandra Reis, Secretary of State for Finance since the 2nd of that month, who integrates the team of Minister Fernando Medina in Finance, had left the TAP administration months before (in February) and received a compensation of half a million euros (at that time currently , the Minister of Finance was João Leão and Minister of Infrastructure Pedro Nuno Santos). On December 26, Minister Medina and Minister Pedro Nuno Santos (Infrastructures) asked TAP for information and confirmed this compensation (and Medina forwarded this answer to the General Inspectorate of Finance). On December 27, Alexandra Reis resigned from the government at the request of the minister. Two days later, on the 29th, Minister Pedro Nuno Santos also leaves the government.
What about the investigative committee?
A few days later, on January 5 and 6, Chega and BE respectively proposed the formation of a parliamentary committee of inquiry (CPI). On February 3, Chega’s proposal is rejected and BEs approved (with votes for all parties, except the PS and IL, who prefer abstention). The CPI essentially proposes to “assess the exercise of political oversight over the management of TAP, particularly in the period between 2020 and 2022, under public scrutiny”. It also wants to review how Alexandra Reis left TAP and, in general, “compensation payment practices”. The CPI took office on February 22. The president would be Jorge Seguro Sanches, from the PS, who resigned in May and was replaced by another PS deputy, Lacerda Sales.
Which minister comes out unscathed?
In practice only one, João Leão. Since he was admittedly still head of finance when Alexandra Reis left TAP with half a million in damages, it has been proven that his ministry was unaware of this. At the CPI, João Leão said he heard about this compensation “from the newspapers” (so it was not until December 2022, when he had not been a minister since March).
What affects Pedro Nuno Santos?
While the former minister spends time stressing that he atoned for his debt by resigning from the government, saying he acted “in good faith” and that he even left TAP with a profit for the first time in 50 years, the facts unavoidable: it authorized TAP’s half-million compensation to Alexandra Reis, whom the IGF would later deem illegitimate (and who in March this year would give the government a pretext to kill the company’s CEO, Christine Ourmières-Widener , and the Chair, Manuel Beja). This was the first serious error. When he invited Alexandra Reis to become president of NAV (a publicly traded airspace management company), he didn’t ask her (“I didn’t have to”) if he intended to pay back the half million he had received from TAP months before . . It further approved a statement from TAP to the CMVM (on February 4, 2022) announcing the departure of Alexandra Reis based on information that the manager had left TAP on its own feet, to “take on new challenges”. In fact, Alexandra Reis left the carrier under pressure from the company’s CEO, who wanted her out. Finally, Pedro Nuno Santos was the most disastrous foreign minister in history. Hugo Mendes will go down in history for three paddle mistakes: He wrote an email to TAP’s CEO asking her to change a Maputo-Lisbon flight for the alleged convenience of one of his passengers, the president of the Republic; forgot to inform Finance of the terms of Alexandra Reis’ departure from TAP; and when the minister and the minister of finance (Medina) asked the company for information about that exit, following the headline of the Mail tomorrow, participated in the preparation of the company’s response. Hugo Mendes will not be politically dead if his friend Pedro Nuno Santos finds him one day.
Medina and original sin
In fact, this whole story started because Fernando Medina invited Alexandra Reis to the government without asking her about possible glass ceilings. On Friday, the Treasury Secretary assured the CPI that he was doing so without knowing the fee the manager was receiving. As he guaranteed, he didn’t find out until December 21, 2022 (Alexandra Reis had been his Secretary of State for Finance for three weeks), when Correio da Manhã questioned him about the article that would later make headlines. 24. Before the government, Medina didn’t ask him about his past at TAP. The minister was aware – he confirmed this Friday – of the disagreements that existed at the carrier between the CEO and Alexandra (and which were at the root of the latter’s departure from the company). He considered them irrelevant because they were not “strategic” disagreements. Therefore, according to him, it was no problem that as Secretary of State for Finance he was financially responsible for TAP, while this company was in charge of a manager with whom he had a conflicting relationship that was so bad that he forced her to leave the company. Despite everything, Medina left this CPI relatively unscathed this Friday, even if it was his original sin that put the spotlight on Alexandre Reis and the half million he received to leave TAP. But he has a sword over his head. In March this year, in a joint statement with the Minister of Infrastructure (now João Galamba), he fired TAP’s CEO and the company’s chairman. It did so on the basis of an IGF report that deemed the entire process leading to Alexandra Reis’ departure (and the associated compensation, of course) illegal. Therefore: the government (Medina + Galamba) has removed the CEO because she had done something for which she had received permission from the government (Pedro Nuno Santos). It could be a strong argument for Christine Ourmières-Widener to challenge the illegality of her dismissal in court. And make yourself pay a high price for it.
Galamba: the most complicated case
The CPI, on the other hand, continued its work at cruising speed as Minister João Galamba (who succeeded Pedro Nuno Santos in the Infrastructure portfolio) staged one of the most scandalous political events in democratic history. These are complaints about physical violence, the alleged theft of a laptop containing secret documents, complaints to the PJ and the PSP and an intervention by the SIS (Security Information Service, or the internal ‘secret’).
It all happened on the night of last April 26. On arrival in Lisbon from Singapore, the minister called his deputy Frederico Pinheiro (who had inherited from Pedro Nuno) and acquitted him. Galamba claims the deputy lied to him when he said he had not taken notes of a meeting (on January 17) that brought him (the deputy) together with TAP CEO and PS deputy Carlos Pereira. This meeting – which would become known as the “secret meeting” – was preceded one day by the participation of Christine Ourmières-Widener in a meeting of the Economics Committee to discuss the resignation of Alexandra Reis (the CPI did not yet exist).
After being cleared by phone, the deputy goes to the Department to retrieve his laptop on duty. There he finds four cabinet employees (the chief of staff, two press agents and a deputy) who do not want to let him take away the computer. Pulling, pushing and alleged aggression – and Frederico manages to take the computer home. Until an SIS agent calls him and orders him to return it. At the door of his house, the fired assistant hands over the computer to that agent. The equipment then goes to CEGER (the state agency that manages the government’s computer network) and ends up with the PJ.
First contradiction: Frederico Pinheiro says at the CPI that the “secret meeting” was actually intended to manipulate the CEO’s testimony in advance to protect the government and the PS. Galamba denies this and so does Catherine herself.
Second contradiction (and more serious): Galamba claims in the CPI that the SIS was called upon to intervene on “guidance” from the Prime Minister’s office, in the person of his assistant secretary of state, António Mendonça Mendes. However, this one, also in committee, denies it: “The report to SIS was not the result of any suggestion, guidance or indication on my part or that of any member of the governmentEarlier, the prime minister himself had sworn that he only learned about the SIS intervention after it happened. The opposition right of the PS accuses Galamba of lying to parliament.
That is why it was Galamba’s chief of staff, Eugénia Correia, who called the “secretaries”. And SIS, informed, acted because it thought it had to act, without being ordered to do so by the government. But in the case of what António Costa himself qualified as a “theft” – that is, a crime – would the SIS, which is not a criminal police agency, be empowered to intervene? Or was this only the responsibility of the PJ or the PSP? At the initiative of the Bloco de Esquerda, the PGR is analyzing the case. And this is just one more fact to prove that this whole thing tends to continue even after the CPI closes.
Source: DN
