Berardo and three others accused of ‘simulating civil action’ to prevent banks recover €1 billion in loans
Years after his disastrous questioning by a parliamentary committee, the now fairly disgraced art collector and businessman Joe Berardo has been formally charged with aggravated fraud for ‘simulating a civil action’ that prevented three national banks from getting their money back – practically a billion euros.
According to a statement published on official website of the public prosecution’s office, the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP) has charged “three individuals, two of whom are lawyers, and one legal entity, the Berardo Collection Association, for acts that it considers to constitute the crime of aggravated fraud”.
It has since been confirmed that one of the individuals charged is indeed Joe Berardo.
According to the Public Prosecutor, the issue concerns a certificate extracted from the CGD (Caixa Geral de Depósitos) case file, which relates to suspicions about the granting of guarantees to CGD, the defunct Banco Espírito Santo (BES), now Novo Banco, and Banco Comercial Português (BCP) “on 100% of the securities of the Berardo Collection Association, under agreements the parties entered into between 2008 and 2012, concerning loans that entities of the Berardo Group contracted and remain outstanding, totalling approximately one billion euros.
“By initiating, in 2013, a simulated civil action that created the appearance of a dispute, the three individuals accused, acting together, successfully prevented creditor banks from accessing the association’s securities and assets, consisting of works of art valued at hundreds of millions of euros,” explains DCIAP.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the civil action “enabled the defendants to approve resolutions at General Meetings of the Berardo Collection Association that undermined the financial interests of the creditor banks and diverged from agreements reached in negotiations and contracts concluded between 2008 and 2010”.
In the main proceedings (the CGD case), police arrested Joe Berardo in June 2021 when investigating judge Carlos Alexandre imposed one of the highest bail sureties known in this country – €5 million – on Berardo, and €1 million on lawyer André Luiz Gomes, also a defendant in the case.
The CGD case, involving 11 defendants, is investigating suspicions of various crimes, including aggravated fraud, money laundering and aggravated tax fraud.
Authorities charged Joe Berardo with eight counts of aggravated fraud, money laundering, tax fraud, two counts of aggravated breach of trust and one count of embezzlement.
The prosecutor charged André Luíz Gomes, who acts as both lawyer and co-defendant in the case, with the same crimes as Berardo and with four additional crimes of aggravated tax fraud, money laundering, document forgery, and computer fraud relating to his companies.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation involves a group “which between 2006 and 2009 contracted four financing operations with CGD, worth around €439 million” and which caused “a loss of almost €1 billion” to CGD, Novo Banco and BCP.
Authorities made the CGD case public after a police operation in which they conducted around fifty searches, including three at bank premises.
According to Portugal’s criminal investigation police the PJ, the group did not comply with contracts and resorted to “debt renegotiation and restructuring mechanisms to postpone repayment”.
The investigation, which began in 2016, identified “internal procedures in credit granting, restructuring, monitoring and recovery processes that diverged from good banking practices,” said the PJ.
This news, breaking yesterday, caused a ‘flurry in the press’, but quite what it means is questionable: it has taken four years since Mr Berardo et al were cited for these crimes for authorities to actually move forwards and ‘formally accuse them’. It will take more time now before a trial can take place – and Joe Berardo is already an 82-year-old man.
source material: Lusa
