Ricardo Salgado may not be physically in courtroom, but his name is never out of it
With the ‘budget drama’ essentially sorted (PS abstention assures approval of the minority government’s first budget), all eyes have shifted to Lisbon’s Central Criminal Court where the trial into Portugal’s largest private bank collapse has started ‘dishing out the dirt’.
One of the first up has been José Maria Ricciardi, former chairman of BESI (BES Investimento) and cousin to the banking empire’s former president Ricardo Salgado – facing 62 crimes, but absent from the hearings due to his incapacity caused by Alzheimer’s disease.
As all reports concede, Ricciardi has long criticised and attacked his cousin. His performance in court has continued in this vein. It was Ricciardi after all who warned the Bank of Portugal in May 2014 that the Espirito Santo group’s accounts had been falsified.
“Is Ricardo Salgado the main culprit?” He was asked yesterday. “I think so, it’s obvious”, came the reply.
But Ricciardi maintains that long before the collapse of the bank, in August 2014, he had warned the governor of the Bank of Portugal (Carlos Costa), who “whistled by the wayside…”
This is a criticism that has come from many quarters, not least the Bloco de Esquerda which went to enormous lengths to try and understand the depths of ‘mismanagement’ that accompanied this indelible stain on Portugal’s financial history.
The court has also heard the deposition of Ricciardi’s father, now dead, who insisted that Ricardo Salgado “was the only one of us that knew everything. Nobody made any decision that Dr Ricardo didn’t agree with”.
And today, José Maria Ricciardi has been describing the moment when he says his cousin ‘tried to bribe him’, over the claims that the group’s accounts had been falsified.
To be fair, his candour has not gone down that well, with a number of people questioning him today as to the motives for his accusations.
The ‘tragedy’ however is that ‘Dr Ricardo’ almost certainly cannot remember any of the details to which his cousin is referring – and, as his defence team argues, he is essentially unable to defend himself.
To this end, public prosecutors have requested that the octogenarian be given the status of “accompanied adult”.
It won’t ‘change anything’ in terms of ‘what comes out’ and ‘who says what’ about this financial disaster that cost the country, all told, around €18 billion – and it won’t require whoever is designated as his ‘responsible companion’ to answer on Mr Salgado’s behalf – but it is a necessary safeguard in cases where ‘situations of incapacity’ have been verified.
