Former Socialist minister Pedro Marques said this Saturday that the operation to buy back TAP by the state was validated by the Court of Auditors and accused the PSD of throwing “smoke screens” over the company’s “disastrous privatisation”.
“The whole operation to buy back the position for the state to be the majority was fully validated by the Court of Auditors. There is no classified document, only one operation has been validated by the Court of Auditors,” the former Minister of Planning and Infrastructure assured Lusa.
The socialist MEP responded to the PSD, which issued a statement today demanding an explanation from the Prime Minister about an alleged agreement between the government and TAP’s private shareholder in 2017, which would have seen businessman David Neeleman receive €55 million when he announced it. company left.
“There is no secrecy here. There is an agreement ratified by the Court of Auditors, which was widely reported at the time,” assured Pedro Marques, for whom PSD Vice President is Miguel Pinto Luz, who should clarify how, when he was part of the PSD/CDS-PP government, he gave “100% support to the private sector, in which all risks belonged to the state and all profits, if any, belonged to private individuals”.
At the time, it was the PS government that “had to put an end to this 100% guarantee signed by Dr. Pinto Luz and by the PSD/CDS government”, Pedro Marques assured.
“In fact, I think it’s a bit shameless that Dr. Pinto Luz has come to ask for clarification on TAP when he has a lot to clarify about what he did when he was governor,” he said.
According to him, in this matter of TAP, the PSD has tried to launch “smoke screens” to “weaken the PS government”, but also to “hide” the privatization process of the national airline.
The Social Democrats want to “create smoke screens over the disastrous privatization operation they have carried out, with the government fired, in the dead of night and with 100% support for the private sector,” the MEP criticized.
The former minister also stressed that his work, as a government official, is “under scrutiny”, declaring himself “absolutely available to provide any clarifications” in the Assembly of the Republic on the TAP process.
“I hope that Dr. Pinto Luz also does not escape any clarifications regarding the approval he gave to the private operation and whether or not he would have knowledge of using TAP money for this privatization operation,” he challenged.
In the communiqué, titled “The Secret Agreements of Socialism at TAP,” the vice president of the PSD demanded urgent explanations from António Costa and other former rulers and corporate officials over a news report in the newspaper Correio da Manhã.
“We have now found out – according to revelations in the press – that there was a secret agreement in 2017. €226 million before the 30-year period set by the PSD/CDS government”, said Miguel Pinto Luz.
The social democratic vice president added that “it was this change that enabled David Neeleman to become the only businessman in the civil aviation sector to earn more than 55 million euros in the period of the pandemic”.
According to Correio da Manhã news, an amendment was made in 2017 to TAP’s initial direct sales agreement in 2015, which stipulated that the $226 million that Atlantic Gateway (consortium consisting of shareholders David Neeleman and Portuguese businessman Humberto Pedrosa) paid in the company was injected should stay with the airline for 30 years.
However, according to the newspaper, in June 2017, the government of António Costa guaranteed Atantic Gateway the right to receive the money before the 30-year deadline, in the event of a blockade or non-compliance of Parpública, which concentrated the state’s shares in TAP.
Source: DN
