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Finance Minister Mário Centeno admitted that there was a lack of communication between his ministry’s office and that of Prime Minister António Costa, in the case of the new tranche of 850 million euros transferred to Novo Banco. In an interview with TSF, Centeno remembers, however, that this new transfer is not a financial failure, since it was already registered and registered in the State Budget for this year. “A financial failure would be disastrous.” This communication gap “is easy to resolve,” he admits.
“Portugal cannot afford to put a bank at risk now, in the midst of a crisis. It was irresponsible,” emphasizes Mário Centeno. For the minister “there is no lack of respect for taxpayers here.” He adds that “We cannot fulfill the contract, nor can Novo Banco.”
The leader of the Eurogroup also says that “no one makes injections without audits”, which has “various levels of validation”. Failure to comply with this transfer could have “disastrous consequences”. Rye remembers that this is “a loan and not an expense.”
This new controversy arose through the voice of the national coordinator of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins, in the biweekly debate on May 7, in which António Costa said that the state loan to the Resolution Fund would not be reinforced until the audit of the Novo Banco, so far ongoing. This after the debate on April 22, the prime minister assured the Left Bloc and the PAN, which requested a suspension of this new section of 850 million, that the audit will be completed in July.
However, Expresso reported that the money had already followed that same week to the Resolution Fund, which was subsequently capitalized by Novo Banco. And wrote: “the the prime minister was unaware of the transfer, and has already apologized for the error. ” And he cited the advice of António Costa, who explains Expresso: “the Prime Minister has already apologized to the Left Bloc for having responded to the ignorance that the Ministry of Finance already had yesterday [6 de maio] contractually provided for payment. “
The next day, António Costa gave a public explanation, saying that he had not been informed of the transfer.
“I was not informed that the Ministry of Finance had made this payment the day before,” the prime minister said, speaking to reporters at the end of an initiative in Porto on Friday. Mário Centeno, Minister of Finance, was on the occasion in Brussels, at the Eurogroup meeting, which he chairs.
Now, in the interview with the TSF radio, Mário Centeno came to the defense of António Costa, saying that the Prime Minister, “at the time he replied, he had no information on what injection would have happened the previous day and I think that is the dimension in which apology continues. ”
The amount to be injected this year, due to the 2019 results, reaches 1,037 million, of which 850 million are public loans to the Resolution Fund. It is now also known that the Resolution Fund finally delivered two million less than expected. As the Express progressed, the injection in the bank was 1,035 million, due to the resolution fund’s refusal to pay two million corresponding to the charge to pay bonuses to the executive board of directors led by António Ramalho since 2022, but which may remain registered in previous years. Companies had already reported the increase at 7% of Novo Banco’s management salaries in 2019, with almost 5% the increase in Ramalho’s salary. This in the year that presented losses of 1,058.8 million euros and requested the 1,037 million euros from the Resolution Fund.
To inject this money, once again, the Fund resorted to a 850 million euro state loan. The money followed earlier this month. And it was here that the new controversy involving Novo Banco began.
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