António Cotrim / Lusa
Debts of 388 million to Millennium, 357 million to Caixa Geral de Depósitos and 299 million to the former BES. Stratagem prevented banks from putting his hand to guarantees given for unpaid financing contracts.
The Public Prosecution Service (MP) accused Joe berardo and three other arguments of boss qualified by simulating a civil action that prevented three national banks from claiming credits in the amount of MILL MILLION EURS.
According to a note published Thursday on the MP’s official page, the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) accused, on July 16, “three singular persons, two of which lawyers, and one collective person, the Berardo Collection Association, for the practice of facts that it considers integrators of the crime of skipper”One of the singular defendants is Joe Berardo himself, confirmed the Attorney General’s Office.
At issue, according to the MP, there is a certificate extracted from the process CGD (Caixa Geral de Depósitos), which concerns suspicions related to the granting of guarantees to CGD, to the extinct Banco Espírito Santo (BES), now Novo Banco, and to the Portuguese Commercial Bank (BCP) “About 100% of the Berardo Collection Association’s titles, in the context of agreements celebrated between 2008 and 2012, regarding financing hired with groups of the Berardo Group and unpaidin the total amount of about billion euros. ”
“Through the opening, in 2013, of simulated civil action, which did not correspond to an effective dispute, the three unique persons defendants, in communion of efforts, succeeded in hindering the access of credit banks to the association’s titles and heritage, composed of works of art evaluated in hundreds of millions of euros”Explained Dciap.
According to the MP, the sentence of the civil action “allowed the defendants to approve deliberations at general assemblies of the Association Berardo Collection injury to the equity interests of the credit banks and contrary to the agreed in the negotiations and contracts celebrated between 2008 and 2010”.
Under the main proceedings, the CGD case, on June 29, 2021 and heard by the then Judge Carlos Alexandre in the first judicial interrogation, which applied to him as a measure of five million euros, and also determined a collateral of one million euros to Lawyer André Luiz Gomes, also defendant In the process and then legal representative of the Madeiran businessman for the business area.
The process with – a list that includes Berardo’s son – investigates suspicions of various crimes, namely qualified scams, money laundering and qualified tax fraud.
Joe Berardo was indicted eight qualified burla crimescapital whites, qualified tax fraud, two qualified confidence abuse crimes and a crime of misleading, having been forced to provide a mark of five million euros and not to leave the country, among other coercion measures.
His lawyer and defendant in the process André Luíz Gomes, besides being indicted for the same crimes as the entrepreneur, was also for four more qualified tax fraud crimes, capital whites, document falsification, computer falsity, which are related to his societies, having to provide a bond of one million euros, among other precautionary measures.
According to the MP, the investigation in the CGD case involves a group “which between 2006 and 2009 hired four financing operations with CGD, in the amount of about 439 million euros”And that will have caused“ a Loss of nearly billion euros ”to CGD, Novo Banco and BCP.
The CGD case was made public after a police operation in which about half a hundred searches were made, three of which to banking establishments.
According to the Judiciary Police (PJ) at the time, the said group incurred with the contracts and resorted to “mechanisms of renegotiation and debt restructuring so as not to amortize”.
In the investigation, which began in 2016, “internal procedures in concession processes, restructuring, monitoring and credit recovery contrary to good bank practices were identified,” said the PJ.
