Portugal’s Secretary of State for Mobility under fire from all sides
The unforgiving sights of press focus on incoming members of government appear to have settled on the new Secretary of State for Mobility, Cristina Pinto Dias – paid an €80,000 indemnity for ‘leaving her post at public railways entity CP’ and taking up a new, much better paid position, on the board of another public company, AMT (authority for mobility and transports).
According to an exposé by Correio da Manhã – the paper whose revelations have already led to two members of government relinquishing their posts – CP had no idea Ms Dias was leaving them to take up another much better paid position in another public company.
Had the company known, “the treatment of the indemnity would not have been the same”. Indeed, there may have been no indemnity at all.
Who says this is none other than the former president of CP, Manuel Queiró.
This admission contradicts the version given to reporters previously by Ms Dias, adding obfuscation (at the very least) to the list of question marks in this case.
Worse, the ‘regime of voluntary contract rescissions’ which Ms Dias is understood to have taken advantage of in leaving CP was “a mechanism designed for employees who were close to retirement age”.
At 49 years of age, not only was Ms Dias not close to retirement, she clearly had a more lucrative public post lined up for her.
An indemnity in this case, say critics, is, at the very least “immoral”.
Correio da Manhã’s deputy editorial director general, Armando Esteves Pereira, goes as far today as suggesting that the public prosecutor’s office should investigate whether this was a case of “harmful management”.
“Cristina had the comfort of a golden job, with an extra and immoral prize, because the law requires that those working for the (AMT) have no work connection with other companies. In other words, if she wanted to go for such a well-paid job – higher paid than even the prime minister – she had to leave the railways…” he writes. Which is exactly what she did in July of 2015, taking up her post at the AMT “the very next day”.
According to CM, a specialist in Labour Law, “who requested anonymity”, has looked in to CP’s programme for voluntary contract rescissions and considers the indemnity paid to Ms Dias “an abuse”.
This unpleasant ‘scandal’ has managed also to implicate Algarve MP Miguel Pinto Luz – the current minister for infrastructures and housing. He was Secretary of State for Infrastructure in 2015, and as such raised no objections to Ms Dias’ €80,000 lump sum payment.
The story has equally seen CM ‘accuse’ Ms Dias of not declaring the indemnity to the Constitutional Court in 2015. This led to Ms Dias being given “a right to reply” slot in the paper on Saturday, which CM today is challenging, suggesting that the law on which she bases her arguments was not in effect at the time.
The recent past has shown that once Correio da Manhã gets its teeth into a story, it doesn’t let go. It was CM too that ‘outed’ the €500,000 golden handshake ‘scandal’ that prompted a slew of resignations and bad press for the PS Socialist absolute majority government that seemed to be the start of a ‘domino effect of disasters’ that led to early elections last month (where the party lost its mojo).
