Secretary of state resigns after TAP golden handshake controversy

  • Lusa
  • 28 December 2022

The secretary of state for the treasury, Alexandra Reis, has submitted her resignation, after being requested to do so by her immediate boss, the minister of finance, Fernando Medina.

Portugal’s secretary of state for the treasury, Alexandra Reis, has submitted her resignation, after being requested to do so by her immediate boss, the minister of finance, Fernando Medina, according to a statement from the ministry released late on Tuesday.

In the statement, Medina explains that he took the decision to “preserve the political authority of the Ministry of Finance at a particularly sensitive time in the lives of millions of Portuguese” – a reference to the cost-of-living crisis caused by inflation.

Reis had in recent days been at the centre of a controversy relating to the national flag carrier, TAP, after the Correio da Manhã newspaper on Saturday reported that she received a payout of €500,000 for leaving early as an executive director of the state-owned airline, when her term still had two years to run. Months later, she was appointed by the government to chair Portugal’s air traffic regulator, Navegação Aérea de Portugal (NAV).

“At a time when we face important demands and challenges, I consider it essential that the Ministry of Finance remains a benchmark of stability, authority and citizens’ trust,” states Medina in the note released by the Ministry of Finance. “These are fundamental values for the good conduct of economic and financial policy and the management of the State’s business sector.”

Medina thanked Reis for all her work, praising her “professional curriculum of enormous merit” and the “quality and correctness with which she defended the public interest in this personally difficult period.”

On Monday, the ministers of finance and of infrastructure and housing had asked TAP management for “information about the legal framework of the agreement” reached with Reis on her departure from the company, including on the compensation paid.

On Tuesday evening, it emerged that TAP had responded by explaining that Reis had initially asked for €1.4 million in compensation under her agreement to cease functions at the company, but that the two sides had ended up agreeing on the sum of €500,000.

“As compensation for the termination of all the aforementioned contractual functions, and despite the initial claim of AR [Alexandra Reis] amounting to 1,479,250 euros, it was possible to reduce and agree an overall gross aggregate amount of 500,000 euros to be paid” to the current ruler, reads the TAP document.

The two ministers, Medina and his colleague Pedro Nuno Santos, announced at the same time that they had sent the TAP response to the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) and the Securities Markets Commission (CMVM).

On Monday, in a written statement sent to Lusa, Reis had said that she would have “immediately” returned any amount paid to her that she believed was not in “strict compliance with the law” on her departure from the airline.