Invesfundo II bankrupt

A court has ordered that a closed real estate investment fund set up by the building developer José Guilherme should be declared bankrupt.

In the summer of last year, the Portuguese Public Ministry had been looking into the business relationship between the developer and the ex-banker Ricardo Salgado (pictured) who is facing a number of charges including corruption and money laundering relating to the fall of the Banco Espírito Santo Group in 2014 which he managed.
Invesfundo II was the fund set up in 2005 that linked BES, the mutual bank Montepio and José Guilherme to a project to develop parcels of land in Amadora, on the outskirts of Lisbon, for housing.
By 2020, the fund held debts worth some €85 million on the balance sheet of Novobanco (created from the remains of BES) and Banco Montepio.
The developer was also investigated by the public ministry on suspicions of having paid €1.5 million in backhanders to the ex-president of Montepio, Tomás Correia in return for a loan, and bribed ex-BES president Ricardo Salgado over a “€14 million act of liberality” in return for money to develop the land.
In other words a “gratuitous willingness to assign goods and/or rights to another to benefit him/her economically” – corruption.
The insolvency of Invesfundo II was granted by a Lisbon court last week after a formal request as such by Gesfimo (a fund management company) last year.
Invesfundo contained loans to around 20 lenders, including Novobanco and Montepio, as well as the Portuguese State, the Portuguese stock market commission CMVM, Gesfimo, and even José Guilherme himself, according to the case files.