Parliament has already received the documents it had requested as a matter of urgency from the Ministry of Finance that bind and / or guide the State in the process of injecting public funds into Novo Banco, through the Resolution Fund (FdR). The information was given by the Left Bloc deputy Mariana Mortágua, during the hearing of the supervising minister, this Wednesday, at the Budget and Finance Commission (COF), with the Secretary of State for Finance clarifying that the lifting of confidentiality is still waiting for Brussels 'green light'.
“Sales contracts are already here, they have two problems: the part that concerns future responsibilities, came as confidential and Parliament needs increased powers to be able to release it and the part that can be verified is so intricate in the contract that nobody can understand. This makes us suspicious about what the State's future responsibilities are for new injections in the Novo Banco ”, said Mariana Mortágua, at the hearing in Parliament, when she questioned João Leão about the State's future responsibilities in relation to the Novo Banco.
COF decided to move forward, on July 2, with the request “urgently” to the Government, through the Ministry of Finance, sending “to this commission all documents that bind and / or guide the State in the process of injecting public funds into Novo Banco, through the Resolution (FdR), including those related to the State aid process no. SA.49275 ”.
The request by the Left Block recalls that the FdR has already sent to the Assembly of the Republic at the request of COF, the Novo Banco purchase and sale agreement and the agreement that instituted the contingent capital mechanism, having subsequently also requested that it send the shareholder agreement. , signed between this entity and the North American fund, Lone Star, which controls 75% of Novo Banco, and the servicing agreement, signed between FdR and Novo Banco, in 2018.
The Secretary of State for Finance, João Nuno Mendes, clarified that Finance has a set of questions about Novo Banco that are under analysis, but that the process of lifting confidentiality also depends on Brussels. “There is a willingness on your part to know, the part which is the decision of the European Commission which is confidential. On our part, it is very well to make this disclosure, but we have to question the other parties, regarding the lifting of this confidentiality ”, he said in response to Mariana Mortágua.
"If the other parties raise confidentiality, we naturally hand over those confidential parts because we have no interest in having any doubts about the scope of those agreements," he said.
Regarding the agreement with the European Commission, João Leão explained that, in an extreme scenario, a set of interventions are foreseen, the primary responsibility for capitalizing Novo Banco belongs to the shareholders of the entity led by António Ramalho and that the State's intervention would only be done in the last instance, “in a situation in which no other shareholder intervenes”.
“The intervention that the State would have in this extreme case would be an intervention of a very different nature than it has done under the contingent capital mechanism, in which it makes loans through the FdR. In the extreme, hypothetical and future scenario, if the State were to intervene, it would be of a totally different nature, because the State would have a position in that bank as a shareholder ”, he stressed, similarly to what the Government had already explained in other interventions.
Mariana Mortágua also questioned the minister about the audit of Novo Banco, scheduled to be concluded in July, clarifying João Leão that “there was a delay of some months here because of the period of confinement”, but that the deadline will be until the end of this month , 31 July.
(Updated at 11h59)
Parliament has already received the documents it had requested as a matter of urgency from the Ministry of Finance that bind and / or guide the State in the process of injecting public funds into Novo Banco, through the Resolution Fund (FdR). The information was given by the Left Bloc deputy Mariana Mortágua, during the hearing of the supervising minister, this Wednesday, at the Budget and Finance Commission (COF), with the Secretary of State for Finance clarifying that the lifting of confidentiality is still waiting for Brussels 'green light'.
“Sales contracts are already here, they have two problems: the part that concerns future responsibilities, came as confidential and Parliament needs increased powers to be able to release it and the part that can be verified is so intricate in the contract that nobody can understand. This makes us suspicious about what the State's future responsibilities are for new injections in the Novo Banco ”, said Mariana Mortágua, at the hearing in Parliament, when she questioned João Leão about the State's future responsibilities in relation to the Novo Banco.
COF decided to move forward, on July 2, with the request “urgently” to the Government, through the Ministry of Finance, sending “to this commission all documents that bind and / or guide the State in the process of injecting public funds into Novo Banco, through the Resolution (FdR), including those related to the State aid process no. SA.49275 ”.
The request by the Left Block recalls that the FdR has already sent to the Assembly of the Republic at the request of COF, the Novo Banco purchase and sale agreement and the agreement that instituted the contingent capital mechanism, having subsequently also requested that it send the shareholder agreement. , signed between this entity and the North American fund, Lone Star, which controls 75% of Novo Banco, and the servicing agreement, signed between FdR and Novo Banco, in 2018.
The Secretary of State for Finance, João Nuno Mendes, clarified that Finance has a set of questions about Novo Banco that are under analysis, but that the process of lifting confidentiality also depends on Brussels. “There is a willingness on your part to know, the part which is the decision of the European Commission which is confidential. On our part, it is very well to make this disclosure, but we have to question the other parties, regarding the lifting of this confidentiality ”, he said in response to Mariana Mortágua.
"If the other parties raise confidentiality, we naturally hand over those confidential parts because we have no interest in having any doubts about the scope of those agreements," he said.
Regarding the agreement with the European Commission, João Leão explained that, in an extreme scenario, a set of interventions are foreseen, the primary responsibility for capitalizing Novo Banco belongs to the shareholders of the entity led by António Ramalho and that the State's intervention would only be done in the last instance, “in a situation in which no other shareholder intervenes”.
“The intervention that the State would have in this extreme case would be an intervention of a very different nature than it has done under the contingent capital mechanism, in which it makes loans through the FdR. In the extreme, hypothetical and future scenario, if the State were to intervene, it would be of a totally different nature, because the State would have a position in that bank as a shareholder ”, he stressed, similarly to what the Government had already explained in other interventions.
Mariana Mortágua also questioned the minister about the audit of Novo Banco, scheduled to be concluded in July, clarifying João Leão that “there was a delay of some months here because of the period of confinement”, but that the deadline will be until the end of this month , 31 July.
(Updated at 11h59)