Ricardo Salgado sentenced to six years in prison

  • ECO News
  • 7 March 2022

Salgado was tried for crimes related to Espírito Santo Enterprises, the already known "Saco Azul" of GES, involving an amount of over €10 million.

The former head of Banco Espírito Santo (BES), Ricardo Salgado, was convicted for the three counts of abuse of trust that came out of “Operação Marquês”. In total, the Portuguese administrator was sentenced to six years in prison.

The court considered as proven “almost all the facts contained in the indictment”, according to judge Francisco Henriques. However, “the issue of the centralised management of BES was not proven”.

Salgado was tried for crimes related to Espírito Santo Enterprises, the well-known “Saco Azul” of GES, involving an amount of over €10 million. The trial took place independently from the other “Operation Marquês” defendants, as Ivo Rosa, at the time of the instructional decision in April 2021, announced that he would separate the proceedings of Salgado, Armando Vara, Carlos Santos Silva, João Perna and José Sócrates.

In April 2021, Judge Ivo Rosa found Ricardo Salgado guilty of just three counts of abuse of trust, dropping two counts of active corruption, nine counts of money laundering, three counts of document forgery and three counts of qualified tax fraud.

The crime of abuse of trust is charged against anyone who “unlawfully appropriates movable or animal property that has been handed over to him by a non-transferable title of ownership”, and is punishable by a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine.