Former minister Pedro Marques this Wednesday pointed to the risk to the state from the 2015 PSD/CDS government order that allowed banks to lend money to TAP as the decision unbalanced privatization.
The discussion surrounding this message, signed by former Secretaries of State Miguel Pinto Luz and Isabel Castelo Branco, marked the hearings of Pedro Marques, both on Tuesday, in the Economics Committee, and today in the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for TAP, in particular during the intervention of PSD deputy Paulo Rios de Oliveira.
“The phrase letter of consolation is from the Court of Auditors, not from Pedro Marques,” the former minister summarized.
The assessment of this “dispatch approving these letters of consolation by those two members of the government on November 12, 2015,” according to Pedro Marques, is that the state was “obliged to buy back all of TAP’s capital” in the event of default privately .
In the period of comments to the PS, the also socialist MEP said he found it “very difficult for someone who was in government not to think about signing an order authorizing a letter of consolation”.
However, Pedro Marques said he does not believe that “people sign an order of this nature because they want to put the state in a situation of total risk”, since this was done “because of the imposition of the banks”.
In the analysis of the former ruler, however, the State should take on “the risk for everything” with this order, since this “unbalanced the privatization operation”.
In a statement during the hearing at the TAP Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, Miguel Pinto accused Luz Pedro Marques of “not having read the transition documents and that this helps a lot to explain what has happened at TAP in recent years”.
“To be clear, the Airbus documents were in the process of being passed on. The one who says that is Lacerda Machado, who herself worked for the minister. And Parpública, under the supervision of the government itself,” said the former PSD/CDS. leader -PP.
At the hearing, former Infrastructure Minister Pedro Marques had said that members of the PSD/CDS-PP government who made the transition of portfolios in 2015 failed to inform the PS government of the TAP activities known as Airbus Funds.
According to Miguel Pinto Luz, the “potestative right is the control mechanism” they created “to allow the state to take back the property of TAP”, which “would have prevented David Neeleman from having to compensate 55 million euros, as it is happened “.
“This mechanism guaranteed that the state would always buy back TAP on better terms than at the time of privatization. Nor did you read the message I signed with my colleague from Finance, Isabel Castelo Branco. The message in which Parpública was authorized to communicate and explain that same potestative right to banks. Had I read it, I wouldn’t insist on calling it a ‘consolation letter’,” he criticized.
Later, Pedro Marques explained to IL Deputy Bernardo Blanco that after the reconfiguration of the shareholder structure by the PS, the obligations of Parpública and the private shareholder regarding the recapitalization became proportional in the shareholder agreement to the percentage of capital of the two parties, and also limited, which, as the former minister pointed out, was not included in the privatization by the PSD/CDS-PP.
In addition, the PS government introduced “very strong” economic incentives for the transfer of co-benefit responsibilities from the private shareholder to Parpública, “in the area where the private sector least wanted to be affected, which was the question of economic rights”.
“The letters of consolation sent after being authorized to send by the two members of the government [PSD/CDS-PP] they said that Parpública was obliged to buy all the shares of TAP, […] all assets and liabilities of TAP, at the time this clause was activated, passed to the State. This is absolutely correct according to what is written in the consolation letter,” he underlined.
Source: DN
