Key figure in BES case dies

José Guilherme, the Amadora builder and close friend of the former president of the Espírito Santo Group, Ricardo Salgado, has died at the age of 85.

Guilherme became famous or infamous for his €14 million “present” he offered to the banker in 2012. On the issue of the “present” Ricardo Salgado told a parliamentary hearing into the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo in 2014: “I have been a friend of José Guilherme for a long time – and when I say a long time, I mean since the start of my career with Banco Espírito Santo at the start of the 1970s”.

The banker had explained a €14 million transfer in 2012 to him from José Guilherme as a form of a “thank-you for strategic advice”, a sum which was later reinforced by a second payment offer of €2 million.

“Mr. José Guilherme is an excellent businessman in the construction area. When the crisis [financial crisis of 2008 followed by the sovereign debt crisis and the troika’s bailout of Portugal] began, he was considering moving his business focus to Eastern European countries. He asked for my opinion, I told him what I thought about it and I advised him to go to Angola, where he had huge success,” continued the former banker in parliament.

The builder from Amadora was, at that time, a client of BES, and one of the most influential for simultaneously having business relations with the Espírito Santo group. Salgado told the inquiry: “Mr. José Guilherme never needed the Espírito Santo Group for anything. In Angola, José Guilherme managed to make a very considerable fortune and was more a creditor of Banco Espírito Santo than a debtor,” Salgado had said.

Guilherme would himself be called to answer questions in the 2014 parliamentary inquiry. He declined because he was in Angola, instead choosing to respond in writing, but rejected discussing the payment made to Salgado.

However, he did emphasise his importance for the BES group, admitting that he had maintained business relationships with entities of the Espírito Santo group, which went beyond a normal relationship between a financial institution and a borrower.

The builder would become one of the largest debtors of Novo Banco, the successor to BES. Guilherme would also be suspected of paying backhanders to Tomás Correia, the former president of the Montepio Mutualist Association, in exchange for a shared bank loan of €85 million with BES. Tomás Correia denied the accusation. At the same time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded, in 2020, that Montepio had granted the businessman unsecured credits to the amount of €70 million.