After months of silence and with his mandate suspended at his request, Pedro Nuno Santos is being heard by the Committee on Economy, Public Works, Planning and Housing, at the request of the PSD, on the situation of TAP in the period between 2015 and 2023 .
Follow Pedro Nuno Santos’ audition live here.
The former Minister of Infrastructure and Housing resigned at the end of December last year after paying compensation of 500,000 euros to former TAP director Alexandra Reis, who was State Secretary of Finance when that payment, to which no justice was done, was paid. reported by Correio da Manhã, on December 24, 2022.
After saying he was not aware of the fee – and after being fired – Pedro Nuno Santos clarified in a statement that he, then-Secretary of State for Infrastructure Hugo Mendes and Chief of Staff Maria Antónia Araújo “had no recollection” of knowing about the compensation and that the minister “gave political permission to close” the process”.
“The only new information, after my resignation, that I wanted to make public was that of a communication I found on January 19, 2023 from my then Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State, that none of the three had memory, informing me of the final value of the agreement reached by the parties and that it was not possible to further reduce the amount of compensation,” he said on January 20.
Pedro Nuno Santos was also the minister in charge of the TAP sector when the government decided to continue with emergency aid to the airline, which had cash flow problems due to the covid-19 pandemic.
that IState intervention, with the approval of the European Commission, costing 3,200 million euros, led to the implementation of a restructuring plan with redundancies and wage cuts still in force and the payment of 55 million euros to former private shareholder David Neeleman to leave the airline, after a standoff with the state.
At that time, Pedro Nuno Santos shared responsibility for the airline with the then Minister of Finance, João Leão, who will be heard later at 5 p.m. at the airline’s investigative committee.
Between these two auditions there is still room to hear the Deputy Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, António Mendonça Mendes, at 3 p.m., in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, on his intervention in the context of the recovery by the Security Information Service (SIS) of a computer equipment in the possession of the former deputy in the cabinet of the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galambato the obligatory demand of the liberal initiative.
Updated
Source: DN
