Former Finance Minister Mário Centeno said on Monday that the transition portfolio he received from his predecessor in 2015 contained no reference to TAP, after recently learning about the so-called Airbus funds.
“The transition portfolio in the TAP dimension did not exist, neither ‘pens’ nor files, there was no reference to TAP in the transition portfolio of the Minister of Finance of the 20th Cabinet [Maria Luís Albuquerque] for the Minister of Finance of the 21st Government”said the former minister of the PS government and current governor of Banco de Portugal on Monday in the committee of inquiry into the airline.
Mário Centeno answered questions from BE deputy Pedro Filipe Soares, about the knowledge he had when he took over the financial portfolio, in 2015, about the consolation letters to the banking industry that enabled the privatization carried out by the PSD/CDS-PP- government led by Pedro Passos Coelho, as well as how to capitalize the company through a deal between former shareholder David Neeleman and an aircraft manufacturer called Airbus Funds.
As for the consolation letters, the former minister said that the information was provided to the Ministry of Finance in stages and therefore it was not possible to specify whether it was correct at the beginning of his mandate, or whether it arrived during the negotiations about the shareholder restructuring by the PS government, which returned the majority of the company’s capital to the state. “But the ministry was aware of this information,” he added.
As for the Airbus funds, “unlike the consolation letters”, Mário Centeno said he only became aware of the subject “very recently, when the media paid attention”.
Source: DN
