Cristina Pinto Dias received €80,000 from CP to go into another (highly paid) public role
Correio da Manhã tabloid is setting a record for ‘exposing’ what it sees as political scandals, causing heads to roll.
The latest splash – the lead story in today’s paper – concerns the new Secretary of State for Mobility, Cristina Pinto Dias, who left CP (Comboios de Portugal) one day – with a fat €80,000 lump sum – to start work at the AMT (Authority for Mobility and Transports), on a salary twice the size of her CP earnings, the next.
The fact that all this happened in 2015 is not the point, according to CM, whose journalists say they have quizzed Ms Dias on whether she feels “comfortable, from an ethical and political point of view, for exercising the government role (today) in an area where she may have political responsibilities over a company that she left on her own initiative, receiving a compensation payment from that company, in order to go to another public company” from which she has now moved on to become Secretary of State for Mobility.
Ms Dias reportedly answered: “Yes”.
But CHEGA certainly does not see it this way – calling the entire situation “immoral”, the populist party with 50 MPs in parliament suggests the House is facing yet another case like the one of former Socialist Secretary of State Alexandra Reis (a story again ‘broken’ by Correio da Manhã).
CM’s handling of the affair has been peremptory. The paper’s opening paragraph runs: “Cristina Pinto Dias, the current secretary of state for mobility, hit the jackpot with the exchange of State roles. When she left Comboios de Portugal in July 2015, the current member of government received an indemnity from the company of €80,000, for rescission of contract by mutual accord, and went on to earn almost double the €7,210 euros a month she received from CP to become an administrator at the Authority for Mobility and Transports”.
Since this new centre-right government took office (only a couple of weeks ago), it has to be said that ‘press exposés’ over its choices (from people to policies) have appeared relentless.
CM itself has already led to the resignations of two appointments. Will this new story lead to a third?
Literally within hours of CM’s story ‘hitting the streets’, CHEGA leader André Ventura held a press conference. It has not helped that this is the day that the Minister of Justice has started ‘conversations’ with political leaders about how best tackle corruption/ cronyism in public life.
CHEGA’s raison d’être has been to call out what many see as endemic corruption within political circles: CM’s story has played right into its hands.
Cristina Pinto Dias’ €80,000 ‘indemnity’ as she stepped from one taxpayer-funded entity to another is “yet another immorality”, Ventura told reporters this morning. His parliamentary group will now be requesting hearings with the current and former CP administrations, he said.
There’s more: as Lusa explains, “André Ventura made a point of saying that the compensation paid to Cristina Pinto Dias in July 2015 was not opposed by current minister for infrastructure and housing Miguel Pinto Luz”, who at the time oversaw CP as Secretary of State in Pedro Passos Coelho’s government.
“We now know that a current government official left a public company for a public institution again with a millionaire’s compensation, where she had a salary higher than that of the president of Portugal, a fact that, unfortunately, is still possible in Portugal”, Ventura went on.
“She left through voluntary redundancy,” he stressed.
“For this reason, André Ventura concluded that this case is “identical to the one that occurred with Alexandra Reis”, the former secretary of state for the treasury, who received compensation of €500,000 to cease her duties as director at TAP, and who then moved on to NAV (the public body overseeing airspace), writes Lusa.
“There is a difference in the amounts involved,” Ventura admitted – alluding to the fact Pinto Dias was awarded only 80,000 euros, while Alexandra Reis received half a million.
But, in his opinion, it all boils down to the same state of rottenness: “government officials at the time saw nothing illegal in awarding this compensation”.
He vowed: “We want to know if there have been more cases like this at CP, we want to know if there are more cases of millionaire indemnities paid to people who leave their jobs of their own free will…”
More to the point, this case has not just beaming an unwelcome spotlight on the new Secretary of State for Mobility: it has highlighted the apparent involvement in the situation of the current minister for infrastructure and housing, Miguel Pinto Luz.
The rush of stories on government appointees with ‘skeletons in their cupboards’ makes something of a mockery of the assurances, pre- the selection process, that candidates’ pasts would be ‘vetted’ rigorously, to avoid embarrassments of the kind for which the last government became notorious.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
