With details of how much bank bailouts and ‘recapitalisations’ have cost the Portuguese taxpayer filling the pages these days, news that yet another ‘former banker’ who helped the country into this fine mess has skipped off apparently unscathed does not make for pleasant reading.
This time it’s former BPP director Paulo Guichard.
Like a number of former directors of banks that have imploded, Guichard has felt the full force of Portuguese justice.
The insolvent “key player in the scheme of false accounting” that scuttled BPP is now living in Brazil – and although Portugal and Brazil share so much history, as well as the same language, they balk at the notion of forging any kind of extradition agreement. This way many cases have been left to lapse, see defendants and/ or plaintiffs die or otherwise dribble into the ether with issues unresolved.
In Guichard’s case, eight years on from the loss of many millions of euros, a judge at the Court of Competition, Regulation and Supervision has simply archived the million euro fine handed to him from the Bank of Portugal.
Whether this means Guichard can freely return to his homeland remains unclear. There is still the matter of a six-year jail term being sought by the Public Ministry which may not be so neatly dispensed with – and for all we know, he is very comfortable in Brazil. Possibly not even insolvent.
Meantime, tabloid Correio da Manhã refers to Guichard’s former co-directors João Rendeiro and Salvador Fezas Vital – both of whom have found it “totally impossible” to pay their massive fines (Rendeiro €2.5 million, Fezas Vital €1.1 million) due to having all their assets already seized by the authorities.
CM adds that since 2007, the help given by the Portuguese State to “banks in trouble” has reached €17 billion. “It is more than the State pays every year on health and education”, says the paper.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
