Antonio Pires de Lima, Minister of Economy between 2013 and 2015 during the board of the PSD/CDS-PP led by Pedro Passos Coelho, will be heard this Wednesday in a TAP panel of inquiry on the airline’s privatization.
This is the second time in a short time that the former minister has gone to Parliament to provide clarification on TAP, after being heard by the Economy, Public Works, Planning and Housing Commission in early April as part of a request from the PS.
António Pires de Lima was Minister of Economy when the Atlantic Gateway consortium, made up of shareholders David Nieleman and Portuguese businessman Humberto Pedrosa, won the privatization of TAP, which ended on November 12, 2015, two days after PSD/CDS-PP. was overthrown by a coalition of PS, PCP, BE and PEV, which had a majority in the post-election formation of the assembly.
The operation was partially canceled by the government led by António Costa (PS), with the state returning to own a majority stake in the company while maintaining the private management of Atlantic Gateway.
At a hearing in April, Pires de Lima argued that it was false and offensive to authorize or enforce the purchase of aircraft for TAP at above fair market value, denying any responsibility for acquiring aircraft that damaged the airline and dismissing the idea of a ruinous business.
According to Eco news released in early February of this year, Neelman-led DGN signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus, which included TAP canceling its contract to “lease” 12 A350s and acquiring 53 aircraft of the new range earlier, at a price of about $254 million above market value.
The paper also reported that Airbus will provide $226.75 million in capital loans to DGN, which will be routed to TAP through the Atlantic Gateway.
The former economy minister also denied that Atlantic Gateway’s early approaches to privatizing TAP mentioned the use of Airbus funds.
“This hypothesis was only formalized by the Atlantic Gateway in a letter to Parpública dated 16 October. [de 2015]and where there was already a guarantee that the planes that were going to be bought would be bought with savings compared to what they consider the market price of 233 million euros,” he said.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Tifany Hawkins, a professional journalist with years of experience in news reporting. I currently work for a prominent news website and write articles for 24NewsReporters as an author. My primary focus is on economy-related stories, though I am also experienced in several other areas of journalism.