Manuel Pinho and Ricardo Salgado charged with corruption

Portugal’s Public Ministry has formerly charged former Minister of the Economy, Manuel Pinho and ex-banker Ricardo Salgado of corruption. The ex-minister’s wife is also charged with corruption.

The charge has to do with the EDP Case states the Public Ministry in a communiqué and involve active and passive corruption, tax fraud and money laundering.
The charge which runs to 574 pages shows that Salgado and Pinho were accused of two crimes of corruption: active in the case of Salgado and passive in the case of Pinho, and capital ‘whitewashing’. Pinho is also accused of the crime of tax fraud.
Pinho’s wife Alexandra Fonseca is also accused as a co-conspirator with her husband for tax laundering and capital laundering.
The investigation goes back to 2012. The focus of the investigation has centred on suspicions of Government favouritism towards EDP at the time José Sócrates was Prime Minister of Portugal.
And as the investigation has gone on, various other suspicions have arisen such as the bribery by Ricardo Salgado (ex-Chairman of BES) of Manuel Pinho, at the time the Minister of the Economy in the José Socrates government.
As Essential Business reported on Wednesday, the investigation is looking into practices of corruption and economic participation in business in the processes regarding the introduction of Contractual Maintenance of Equilibrium Costs which were introduced in Portugal’s electricity market.
The legal suspects in this case are: Manuel Pinho, Alexandra Pinho, António Mexia, ex-President of EDP, João Manso Neto, ex-President of EDP Renováveis, Artur Trindade, ex-Secretary of State for Energy in a PSD led government, Ricardo Salgado, ex-President of BES, Miguel Barreto, ex-General Director of Energy, João Conceição, REN administrator and former consultant to Manuel Pinho, and Pedro Furtado, in charge of regulation at REN.