BES trial opens after 10-year investigation
One of the biggest and most media sensational trials of the past 10 years in Portugal into the collapse of the Banco Espírito Santo banking empire opened in Lisbon yesterday.
The most infamous of the defendants, Ricardo Salgado, the former chairman of the banking group which collapsed eventually costing the Portuguese tax payer and State over €8Bn and left hundreds of small investors without that life savings, arrived at the city’s law courts complex Campus de Justiça and was immediately surrounded by a frenzied media circus.
Looking old, tired and frail, the once and arguably most powerful businessman in Portugal, who once allegedly told journalists “I own the whole lot” when referring to Banco Espírito Santo as if it were his own private fiefdom, was met by small investors carrying placards shouting for justice.
Alongside was a funeral hearse from the ‘Victims of BES’ with a photo of Salgado and a notice stuck to the vehicle’s window starting “They killed our savings, now it’s time for justice”.
Supported by his wife Maria João Bastos Salgado and his lawyer, Francisco Proença, who said “today a black page has been opened in Portuguese justice”, the former banker who led a champagne lifestyle with hunting trips in Scotland and the Alentejo and Swiss holidays, and is said to be suffering from dementia as a result of Alzheimer’s disease, was ushered into the court to face a row of judges to confirm his name, date of birth (which apparently he could not remember), and residence before being dismissed and leaving the court heckled by protesters.
The defence lawyer, on leaving the hearing, lost no time in criticising the collective of judges by saying “we know how people (with dementia) are treated overseas and how they are treated in an uncivilised world”.
On the other hand, the lawyer could have avoided the screams for justice and the press pack by entering the building via the underground car park, but instead chose to allow his client the indignity of entering the building via the main entrance.
Ten years after the fall of BES, with the defendant Ricardo Salgado accused of 62 crimes (three in the meantime have been shelved because of the statute of limitations), the BES case trial involves 17 individual defendants, seven defendant companies, 733 witnesses, 135 assistants and more than 300 crimes. This megacase, which already runs to 215 volumes of legal papers, statements and evidence totalling four thousand pages, has finally begun.
The ex-banker, who was initially charged with a total of 65 offences, will now be tried for 62 criminal offences, after two crimes of document forgery and one of infidelity expired.
The recent survey of crimes at risk of statute of limitations carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office also indicates that Ricardo Salgado could face another crime of forgery at the end of November and another two crimes at the end of December.
In January 2025, three more crimes of document forgery will expire. One of infidelity will fall at the end of February, and another three of infidelity will fall by 28 March.
More than a decade after the collapse of BES/GES and the start of the investigation, more crimes are also at risk of expiring by the end of the first quarter of 2025, namely those of the defendants Francisco Machado da Cruz, Amílcar Morais Pires, Pedro Góis Pinto, Pedro Almeida e Costa, Cláudia Boal Faria, Etienne Cadosch, Michel Creton, João Alexandre Silva, and Nuno Escudeiro.
Regarded as one of the biggest lawsuits in the history of Portuguese justice, this case, investigated by the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) – a department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office -, brought together 242 inquiries in the main case (which were joined) and gathered complaints from more than 300 people living in Portugal and abroad.
