Former banker flees justice, will appeal to international courts

The former chairman of the Banco Privado Português (BPP) João Rendeiro, sentenced on Tuesday to prison in a process for crimes of qualified fraud, says he does not intend to return to Portugal because he feels unjustified and will appeal to international bodies.

In an article published on his blog Arma Crítica, João Rendeiro said he has already asked his lawyer to communicate the decision to the Portuguese justice system and says he has become a “scapegoat for a desire to punish those who, after all, were not punished”.

“It is a difficult choice, taken after deep reflection. I asked my lawyers to tell the courts, and I want to make this decision public,” he writes.

The former BPP chairman, who on Tuesday was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for crimes of aggravated fraud, recalled that in another case in which he had been given a suspended sentence for forgery of documents and false information technology, the Court of Appeal had taken an “unexpected decision” by reversing the ruling to eight years in prison.

“It is a manifestly disproportionate sentence, in which I was convicted according to a so-called criterion of general crime prevention because of the banking scandals that did not exist at the time of the facts and could not be retroactive against me. I became the scapegoat of a desire to punish those who, in the end, were not punished”, he writes.

In the text published today on the blog Arma Crítica, Rendeiro says he feels unjustly treated by Portuguese justice and that he will try “international bodies to evaluate how everything happened”.

As for the 2006 case, he claims that he appealed to both the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutional Court but that his claims were rejected, which he considers unfair.

“When I appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice, it decided that I could appeal against the final sentence but not against the partial sentences that led to that result. That is, it denied me the right to appeal. When I went to the Constitutional Court (TC), it rejected my appeal because I was not appealing against laws that I considered unconstitutional, but against the judicial decision that applied them”, he alleges.

He also stresses that the argument of the TC “has already become a way for that court to reject the vast majority of cases that are submitted to it”.

“I have the right to be judged by the legal criteria that were in force at the time, I have the right to appeal an unexpected sentence, I have the right not to run away from considering the laws that allow all this to be contrary to the Constitution,” he insists.

Rendeiro also considers that he was the victim of “a populist campaign of intoxication of public opinion and pressure on justice” and that, because of this context, in a second process, initiated in 2014 and which on Tuesday met a decision, he has now been summoned to appear before a judge, so that the measure of coercion can be changed and the arrest made.

“Naturally, it had become easier to continue sentencing, as happened yesterday, when I was sentenced to another three years and six months when nothing allowed such a sentence,” he says.

He says that his absence from the country is “an act of legitimate defence against an unjust justice system” and that he accepts responsibility in the context of the banking acts he has carried out, but that he will not submit to this situation “without resistance”.

“I will appeal to international bodies because there is a law above what is considered to be law in Portugal. I will fight for my freedom to be able to do so,” concluded the former BPP CEO.

João Rendeiro was sentenced on Tuesday to three years and six months in prison for crimes of qualified fraud.

At the origin of this trial is the complaint of the retired ambassador Júlio Mascarenhas who, in 2008, invested €250,000 in BPP bonds, a few months before it became public that the institution led by João Rendeiro was in a serious situation.

Also accused in this case were former directors Paulo Guichard and Salvador Fezas Vital. The former was sentenced to three years in prison and the latter to two years and six months.

The court decided that the former BPP managers will also have to pay €225,000 for patrimonial damages and €10,000 for moral damages to Júlio Mascarenhas.