Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho called the connection to the previous owner of Eurolocarno “slanderous”, citing António Barata da Silva Barao, the founder of a real estate company that was involved in a business that damaged Novo Bank’s €260 million liquidation fund.
“Communication with the previous owner of the company is completely slanderous. I have not been in contact with him and none of the partners have been in contact with him,” Cravinho said.
As for the “tax problems” of Marcos de Almeida Lagoa, the minister’s partner in this company, Gomes Cravinho stressed that “these problems, if they exist, have nothing to do with the company, much less with me.” “I became a partner in 2015 and have never had managerial responsibilities,” he stressed.
“I have known Marcos Lagoa for many years, but I do not know anything about his financial problems,” the minister added. “I emphasize that the company has no legal problems, it has current taxes. Since I entered the government, I have declared that I have 20% of the shares,” the minister concluded.
Military hospital: “I didn’t like that they said I was lying”
Regarding the stalled work on the military hospital in Belém, when Cravigno was still in charge of the defense, the minister assured that he would go to parliament “to answer all questions.” “I didn’t like that they said I lied to the Portuguese parliament. There is no lie in what I have explained,” he added.
The official also believes that this dispute “does not affect his political capacity in any way.” Finally, when asked about his willingness to fill out a questionnaire intended for candidates for government, Cravinho replies that “I have already done the mental exercise by answering this questionnaire, I can answer this questionnaire without problems.”
Statements by the Minister of Foreign Affairs were made on the sidelines of a meeting of 27 ministers responsible for EU external relations, which approved an increase of another 500 million euros for the peacekeeping mechanism in Ukraine and another 45 million euros for the European Military Assistance Mission – aimed at training Ukrainian armed forces.