Ateneu Cultural Association was over hundred years old
An insolvency administrator was arrested today as PJ judicial police carried out an operation to investigate an alleged scheme that damaged the Ateneu cultural association in Lisbon by millions of euros. Four others were made ‘official suspects’.
In a statement, the PJ, said that as part of the case into the Ateneu insolvency, four house searches and two searches of lawyers’ offices in the Greater Lisbon area were carried out.
Dubbed “Quid Pro Quo”, the operation led by the National Anti-Corruption Unit suspects the insolvency administrator of “the aggravated offences of active and passive corruption, money laundering and document forgery”.
In its statement, the PJ did not mention that the case concerns the insolvency of the Ateneu Comercial de Lisboa, but a police source has confirmed that it does.
“The detainee, together with four other defendants, two of them lawyers, devised a criminal plan that allowed them to appropriate assets worth more than €10 million belonging to a century-old cultural association,” said the statement.
According to investigators, the “modus operandi” consisted of Ateneu filing for insolvency due to debts totalling around €500,000, the subsequent approval of an insolvency plan that presupposed an investor liquidating these liabilities, and obtaining ownership of three properties belonging to the cultural association, valued at €10 million.
“At a later date, and to implement a property project, the investor sold these properties to a third party company for €8.75 million,” the police said.
According to the PJ, after selling the properties, the investor shared more than €2.8 million with his lawyer and the insolvency administrator through the latter’s daughter by signing false free loan agreements.
“Four properties were acquired with the proceeds of the illegal activity, and the PJ seized them, as well as bank balances worth €1 million”.
Three of the defendants currently hold management positions at the Ateneu Comercial de Lisboal, which was once a stunning ‘palace’ in the heart of Lisbon, but has been left to ‘die slowly’ for years.
The arrested administrator will be brought before a court tomorrow for the application of bail measures.
The case dates back to 2012. According to Observador online: “A month after two tenants signed a rental agreement, the Ateneu was declared insolvent – there was a €400,000 hole in the institution’s accounts. The insolvency administrator was tasked with clearing up the association’s liabilities, but, according to the tenants at the time, he instead tried to remove them from operating the building to serve his own interests”.
Source material: LUSA/ Observador
