The PS is considering calling those responsible for the privatization of TAP in 2015, carried out in a PSD/CDS government, to parliament after it became known that David Neeleman carried out this operation with money from the airline itself.
In statements to journalists in the Assembly of the Republic, after a meeting of the parliamentary group of the PS, Eurico Brilhante Dias reacted to a news released by the newspaper ECO on Wednesday that Iindicates that the privatization of TAP in 2015 was won by former shareholder David Neeleman with money from the airline itself.
The parliamentary leader of the PS considered that this issue is of “enormous seriousness” and recalled that the privatization in question was carried out by the XX constitutional governmentthe second led by former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who “was in office for less than a month”.
“Since this process was carried out by a government that had less than a month to run, a government that had taken office on October 30, 2015 – if I recall correctly – and which closed the privatization under those terms on November 12, 2015, we strongly consider the possibility of summoning to parliament the political leaders who carried out this privatization in 2015,” he said.
Brilhante Dias pointed out that the PS intends to understand the “airbus purchase operation” by TAP and the “political responsibility of a government that has been in office for less than a month and that will have privatized TAP twelve days after its capture”..
Eurico Brilhante Dias pointed out that the PS will ask “more information” about this privatization process “not only from TAP, but also from itself” airline and later assess whether it summons “the political leaders who were in office at the time of privatization” to the parliamentary committee on economics.
When asked who the PS is considering coming and calling – and whether that includes Pedro Passos Coelho, then Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas – Brilhante Dias replies: “We are considering, but especially who was in charge of TAP at the time”.
In the XX Constitutional Government, the then Minister of Economy, Miguel Morais Leitão, oversaw TAP and had as Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications Miguel Pinto Luz, the current Vice President of the PSD.
On Wednesday, ECO newspaper reported that, four years after Atlantic Gateway, a consortium of David Neeleman and Humberto Pedrosa, acquired a 61% stake in TAP on June 12, 2015, the DGN company, led by Neeleman, sealed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus.
According to the ECO news, the The memorandum in question implied that TAP would abandon a contract with Airbus for the ‘leasing’ of 12 A350 aircraft and instead acquire 53 aircraft. ECO states that the amount TAP will pay for the 53 aircraft in question is about $254 million above market value.
The paper also adds that, “according to data from the Atlantic Gateway,” Airbus would “provide capital loans to the DGN, amounting to $226.75 million, to be channeled through the Atlantic Gateway to TAP,” which corresponds to the “exact value of the largest tranche of deliveries that would later be placed on the airline”.
Source: DN
