The secretary of state said this Monday that he had already done a quick “mental exercise” reviewing the 36 questions in the government’s new questionnaire for gubernatorial candidates and that he had “no doubt” that he had “no problems would answer.
“I quickly got through the mental exercise of looking at the questions. I have no doubt that I can answer this questionnaire without any problems”he stated, when asked in Brussels if he would be available to answer the questionnaire recently prepared by the government, although it is intended only for future secretaries of state and ministers, and not for rulers already in office.
João Gomes Cravinho addressed the press on the sidelines of a meeting of the European Union’s heads of diplomacy and also commented on the news on the eve of CNN Portugal that he is a partner in a real estate company, whose founder, António da Silva Barão, was involved in a commercial real estate that damaged the resolution fund of Novo Banco (NB) by 260 million euros, as the association made is “completely defamatory”.
“I would like to add right away that the association with a person who was the former owner of the acquired company is blatantly defamatory to him,” started explaining.
João Gomes Cravinho, on the other hand, admitted that he has known “for many, many years” another partner of the property management company Eurolocarno, Marcos Lagoa, who has already been convicted of tax fraud, according to CNN Portugal, but guaranteed that “he was not aware of any legal or fiscal problem it might have” and underlined that it has nothing to do with those problems.
“Since 2015 I have effectively become a partner in this company, I have never had any management responsibility and I found out yesterday [domingo] that apparently one of the partners had problems of a fiscal nature. I was completely unaware of it, but I want to emphasize that these issues have nothing to do with the company and much less with me.”
“There is no connection between me and any legal problems. The company itself has never had any legal problems, its taxes are up to date, it has no social security debts. And from the moment of entering the government I have I declared in successive statements to the Constitutional Court that I had a 20% stake, and not a majority, as was initially said,” completed João Gomes Cravinho.
Source: DN
