Grupo Barraqueiro interested in TAP

Portugal’s Barraqueiro Group, owned by former TAP shareholder Humberto Pedrosa, is exploring joining forces with a national consortium or one of the three international airline groups to make a bid for the public-owned airline which is being prepared for privatisation.

The national consortium involves airline company Avianca and Diogo Lacerda Machado, ex-TAP director and former consultant to the government on matters relating to negotiating with private companies. He is also said to be one of the Prime Minister’s best friends.
Grupo Barraqueiro has also signalled an interest in joining forces with one of the other main International airline groups said to be interested in buying a share in TAP that has yet to be decided by the government. Those companies are Iberia-British Airways, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa.
Humberto Pedrosa had already admitted three months ago at a parliamentary commission inquiry into TAP’s management that he would be pleased to team up with a national group interested in competing in the privatisation of the Portuguese airline.
Avianca is owned by Brazilian tycoon German Efromovich who had an opportunity to buy TAP in 2013, an operation that fell through at the 11th hour because he was unable to rustle up guarantees for €10 million. Another bid in 2015 also went by the wayside.
Efromovich specialises in vulture acquisitions, meaning buying distressed assets on the cheap and turning these companies around to sell on and make a profit.
However, the businessman has a somewhat shady past having in 2020 be arrested over suspicions that he was involved in one of Brazil’s biggest corruption cases, Operation Carwash – an investigation into money laundering and political corruption in Brazil, which has been led by investigative judges, and carried out by the Federal Police and involving embezzlement at oil company Petrobras and construction company Oderbrecht.