Former securities market commissioner call for TAP penalties

The former president of Portugal’s Securities Market Commission (CMVM) Carlos Tavares has accused the TAP board of lying to the market about the departure of Alexandra Reis and that the company should be sanctioned.

In an interview with Antena 1 and Jornal de Negócios, the former Economy Minister in Durão Barroso’s government commented on the controversy surrounding the former secretary of state Alexandra Reis and her departure from TAP, saying that the disagreements with the Portuguese company’s CEO should have been resolved by the board of directors.

“If there were disagreements, it is not solved by removing a person you disagree with, but by going up to the board of directors, and the board would make its decisions,” Carlos Tavares told Lusa on Sunday.

Tavares even felt that Alexandra Reis did not need to leave TAP because of disagreements and could have become a non-executive director.

Tavares also said that he believed that the company had lied to the CMVM about the resignation of the former TAP director, as there was “different information” about Alexandra Reis’ resignation, and that this communication should have been made by the board of directors and not by the CEO.

“You only have to compare the two communications that were made to conclude that they say different things. This shows, once again, the lack of care. It is not the CEO who is accountable to the market. It is the board of directors, once again”, he stressed.

In this sense, the former CMVM president believes that “there has been a violation of the securities code” and that TAP “should be sanctioned”.

“The CMVM should act because there has been a violation of the securities code. In the current code, an infraction of this type is treated as a simple administrative offence, very serious I think, but I think the sanction is relatively limited,” he noted, adding that in his view, this type of situation should be considered a crime.

When asked about the controversies related to the choices for the government, the former governor said that there should be “self-scrutiny” of who is invited and “an evaluation of who invites”.

“People who are invited should ask themselves if they have any problems, any questions and expertise for the job. And there must be great care on the part of those who select”, he pointed out, stressing that the choices always involve a question of “political trust and personal knowledge”.

Concerning the selection process, Tavares admitted that at the moment, “there is no certainty” that the people in charge of public positions are “the most suitable” for that job.

“There has to be an evaluation, not only of each person’s circumstances but also of their curriculum vitae. I have doubts that, in some cases, people have the right CV for the situations. The practical consequence is that we have no security that the people are in the positions are the best there would be in the country,” he said.

On 27 December, Finance Minister Fernando Medina dismissed Alexandra Reis as secretary of state for the treasury, less than a month after having invited her to this position in the government and after four days of controversy over the €500,000 compensation that this career manager had received from TAP, a company then under the responsibility of Infrastructure and Housing Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, who resigned a day later to “assume political responsibility” for the case.