BES victims threaten to take case to Brussels

Eleven years after the collapse of Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo, leaving thousands who had invested life savings in supposedly safe covered bonds penniless, the victims say they will lodge a formal complaint to Brussels if they don’t see the colour of their money.

The association fighting for compensation for the victims of Portugal’s largest private bank collapse have issued an ultimatum to the incoming government – whatever government it turns out to be on May 18.

ABESD— Association for the Defence of Bank Customers — wants a fund created to compensate the many hundreds of victims. As it points out, the money is there: it has already been ‘seized’ by public prosecutors from those held criminally responsible for the bank’s failure.

According to the Lusa news agency, the president of ABESD, Francisco Carvalho stressed that as things stand at the moment, the State is not complying with the European directive that provides for the financial compensation for the victims.

One solution is for the fund to be financed by the assets seized in the BES/GES criminal case. These assets include cash, property, works of art and shares in companies valued in excess of  €5 billion, when, in terms of victims’ losses, ABESD is just trying to secure €300 million.

ABESD is very critical of the way legal proceedings are being conducted regarding the treatment of the victims, considering above all that the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not doing what it should to defend them and is acting “as if the assets seized from the defendants could be retained for total loss in favour of the Portuguese state alone”.

In the criminal proceedings (the trial began in October 2024), thousands of aggrieved clients applied for the status of victims of financial and moral damage, and around 2,000 of them were granted this status.

However, despite this, ABESD says that the justice system “fails to offer material justice” and cannot be content with convicting those responsible: it must provide material compensation to all victims.

ABESD has recalled the Bernard Madoff case in the United States, noting that the Department of Justice took proactive measures to ensure the restitution of assets to victims even before the sentence was handed down.

Thus, Portugal’s approach amounts to a further victimisation of those who often lost their entire life savings: they were victims of BES, then of the decisions of the Bank of Portugal and now they are victims of the courts reports the Portugal Resident newspaper.

Photo: JOSÉ COELHO/LUSA
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