Fernando Medina said this Monday that he had not read and will not read the book by the former governor of Banco de Portugal and that he was not aware of the existence of the demonstration outside the door of the former official, who according to Carlos Costa it was authorized by the Chamber.
“I have not read the book and will not read it,” Fernando Medina replied to journalist Pedro Santos Guerreiro, while participating in the conference marking the first anniversary of CNN Portugal in Lisbon.
The finance minister said he would not comment on Carlos Costa’s statements in the controversial book, in which he accuses the prime minister of interfering in banking supervision matters.
However, questioned about the former governor’s reference to a demonstration outside his home, which he said had been sanctioned by the Lisbon City Council, led at the time by Fernando Medina, as a form of pressure from the PS, Medina said that “I have no idea that it was there.”
“Municipal councils do not have the power to prohibit or allow demonstrations under the Portuguese constitution. […] I didn’t even know this had happened. The right to demonstrate has always existed. Perhaps that is another misconception in this book,” said the finance minister.
The prime minister and former governor Carlos Costa are at odds after Mário Centeno’s predecessor claimed to be the target of pressure from António Costa not to remove Isabel dos Santos from BIC.
The revelations are contained in the book “O Governador”, which is the result of a series of interviews by the Observer journalist Luís Rosa to Carlos Costa, who ran the Banco de Portugal between 2010 and 2020, and which has sparked controversy.
With a foreword by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, the publication reveals previously unknown facts about the intervention of the ‘troika’, the Banco Espírito Santo case, the Banif resolution, the strained relations with former Prime Minister José Sócrates, with the current, António Costa, and former finance minister Mário Centeno, as well as the ‘wars’ with former banker Ricardo Salgado and the Espírito Santo family.
António Costa announced that he will sue the former governor, accusing him of writing a book of lies and misrepresentations about him and mounting a political operation to attack his character, after reaffirming that there was “a attempt by the government for political power to interfere with the Bank of Portugal”.
Source: DN
