Former BES boss charged on 65 counts following six-year investigation
Ricardo Salgado, Former BES boss, has been charged on 65 counts of crimes including criminal association, bribery, embezzlement, money laundering and tax fraud.
The former CEO of Banco Espírito Santo (BES), Ricardo Salgado, has been charged on 65 counts of crimes including criminal association, bribery, embezzlement, money laundering and tax fraud, at the end of the BES/GES investigation that began six years ago.
The attorney-general’s office announced that a total of 18 individuals and seven companies had been charged, in a statement released late on Tuesday night.
According to the indictment, which Lusa has seen, Salgado has been charged on one count of criminal association, in co-authorship with 11 other defendants, including former BES board members Amílcar Pires and Isabel Almeida.
He is also charged on 12 counts of bribery in the private sector and on 29 counts of serious fraud, in co-authorship with other defendants, including José Manuel Espírito Santo Silva, another member of the bank’s founding family, and Francisco Machado da Cruz.
Public prosecutors have also charged the former CEO of breach of trust and market manipulation, as well as on seven counts of money laundering and eight of forgery.
José Manuel Espírito Santo Silva, another former BES board member and cousin of Ricardo Salgado, is charged on several counts of of embezzlement and breach of trust, in co-authorship.
Amílcar Pires, another former BES board member and financial director, also faces charges of criminal association in co-authorship with other defendants, receiving bribes, embezzlement, money laundering, market manipulation, document forgery and breach of trust.
Former BES board member Isabel Almeida was also charged on one count of criminal association in co-authorship with others, receiving bribes, embezzlement, money laundering, market manipulation, document forgery and breach of trust.
Manuel Espírito Santo Silva, Francisco Machado da Cruz, António Soares, Alexandre Cadosch, Michel Creton, Cláudia Boal Faria, Pedro Cohen Serra, Paulo Carrageta Ferreira, Pedro de Almeida e Costa, Nuno Escudeiro and Paulo Nacif Jorge are among others also charged in the case.
The seven companies charged are Espírito Santo International, Rioforte Investments, Eurofin Private Investment, Espírito Santo Irmãos, ES Tourism Europe, Espírito Santo Resources Limited and ES Resources (Portugal), with crimes that range from embezzlement to receiving bribes, document forgery and money laundering.
In the statement released on Tuesday, the attorney-general’s office states that the main BES/GES case comprises 242 separate criminal inquiries, following up complaints from more than 300 people residing in Portugal and abroad, whose purpose was the investigation of data relating to a group of companies, including some licensed to carry out banking and financial intermediation activities.
The note states that, due to the geographical dispersion of the facts investigated, debt and capital instruments of ESFG, the group’s top financial holding company, with stakes in several banking units, were excluded from the investigation, with inquiries to be continued in separate inquiries in order to ascertain any tax infractions and crimes related to holders of political office abroad.
One inquiry has been started for a separate investigation into a foreign citizen (whose identity is not revealed in the statement), and another for the circumstances of the capital increase carried out by BES in June 2014, just months before the Bank of Portugal stepped in to wind it up.
