By Andrea Hargraves 
In the document delivered on the 18th and being consulted today by Lusa at the Court of Competition, Regulation and Supervision (TCRS), in Santarém, representatives of the former president of Banco Espírito Santo (BES) asked the Court of Appeal of Lisbon (TRL) to hold a hearing, where they want to hear, as a witness To former diplomat and former member of the European Parliament, Anna Gomez.
In explaining the request, the attorneys claimed the fact that Anna Gomez is the aunt of Judge Mariana Machado and that both referred in the media to the dangers of describing cases related to Ricardo Salgado, and considered that the former MEP, by the statements made, had already ruled and condemned this “in the public arena.” “.
In the hearing held at TCRS on the 21st, to set a date for trial hearings, Judge Mariana Machado said she would rule on the incident of refusal upon being notified by TRL, stressing that the records are of an urgent nature, due to partial risk. Prescription, so the trial will begin.
In the application to TRL, the defense of Ricardo Salgado, led by attorney Adriano Squelaci, requested that the refusal be approved and all acts carried out in the case declared null and void.
Mariana Machado stated, at the 21st hearing, that if the incident of refusal is deemed valid, it will only apply in relation to Ricardo Salgado, as it has not been recorded by the other recurring accused.
In the refusal incident submitted to TRL, Salgado’s defense collected 40 documents (articles and news with statements by Anna Gomez), to which he added, three days later, several “tweets” that the former diplomat posted on 20, one of them in a comment on Express News that caused the listed operation On the Lisbon and at risk list of the recipe (next June 27).
As for the attorneys, the judge “does not provide guarantees of impartiality and exemption,” even though they say they do not want to question “personal and professional dignity or even integrity in its own aspect.”
The other issue they raised, which in their view also called into question “objective integrity”, was the decision to join the Eurofin process in the BESA process, when Mariana Machado denied Ricardo Salgado’s intention to join with KPMG.
However, both Mariana Machado and the judge who initially received the Eurofin case, Vanda Miguel, confirmed that the BESA and Eurofin cases involved the same entity (BES) and its banking activity for the period ending August 3, 2014 (date decision), in contrast to what happened with the company. KPMG. Since BESA was the oldest, BESA’s chair of the jury was responsible for the “mega-operations”.
KPMG’s lawsuit, which involved allegations scheduled for June 1, includes a fine of € 1.0 million imposed on the auditor of consolidated BES accounts by the Portuguese Stock Market Commission (CMVM).
In the BESA / Eurofin case, fines totaling € 17.3 million applied by Banco de Portugal (BdP) are at risk.
In the first case, Ricardo Salgado and the former Chief Financial Officer of BES Morais Pires were found guilty of violations such as failure to implement measures that strengthened or ensured monitoring of operations carried out with BES Angola, and failure to implement credit risk analysis processes in relation to the credit contracted with that institution, ” Despite the extremely high relative importance of the sums involved and the potential impacts associated with their default. “
The third fine imposed on them in this case was for “failure to comply with mandatory reporting duties” to BdP for problems associated with the BESA credit and real estate portfolios, the same that Roy Silvera, the wallet owner, had audits and inspections, while Gerardo Petracini was convicted of non-compliance. Internal control systems and failure to identify deficiencies in internal control by Espírito Santo Financial Group (ESFG), of which he was director.
In the Eurofin process, the BdP bank presented to the former president of Banco Espírito Santo seven administrative offenses, attributed to Ricardo Salgado the malicious acts of the destructive administration practiced on the account of depositors, investors and other creditors, and the unlawful disobedience of the BdP report that required feeding the escrow account with resources outside the ESFG .
Also found guilty of unlawful disobedience to BdP provisions which imposed an obligation to eliminate ESFG’s insecure exposure to Espírito Santo International (ESI / ESR) which prohibited BES’s direct and overexposure to ESI (letters of convenience)) and sale, directly or indirectly, Entity debts in the non-financial branch of GES to retail customers.
Other offenses relate to disobeying the ban on granting financing or refinancing, directly or indirectly, to GES financial entities that were not part of the BES group and violating rules on conflicts of interest.
Amilcar Moraes Perez was convicted of four counts and José Manuel Espírito Santo Silva for three counts, and his lawyer, Rui Patricio, filed three appeals to bring to the Lisbon Court of Appeal regarding the link between the two cases.
Judge Mariana Machado did not accept the appeals, which were filed in January, February and April at TCRS, prompting Roy Patricio to file a complaint about his retention of the relationship.
Rui Patricio claims that José Espírito Santo Silva is not accused in the BESA process, there is no sense in being “drawn” into discussing facts in which he does not interfere, and that accession creates a “massive process” that delays the decision and violates the right to a “fair and equitable” process.
The trial was supposed to start today, but the start date of June 2 was postponed due to the unavailability of Fernando Infante, from the Prudential Supervision Department of the Bank of Portugal (BdP), and because the Public Prosecutor did not dispense with the hearing. This witness first.
Only Roy Silvera and Amilcar Moraes-Perez have expressed their intention to make statements in the file after presenting evidence, and Ricardo Salgado expressed the same interest in the twenty-first.