Galamba believes TAP’s deal with Airbus shows that the 2015 operation “wasn’t really a privatization.”

On Tuesday, the infrastructure minister said TAP’s deal with Airbus, led by former private shareholder David Nieleman, “demonstrates that the privatization done in 2015 was not really a privatization.”

João Galamba spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Topsky air traffic control system and the air traffic control room at NAV Portugal’s Lisbon air traffic control centre.

“This shows that the privatization carried out in 2015 was not really a privatization,” João Galamba replied to a question about the purchase of Airbus aircraft by TAP during the time of former shareholder David Nieleman and about the news published by the ECO newspaper. last week, indicating that the airline’s 2015 privatization will be won by Nieleman with the airline’s own money.

PS is considering calling to Parliament those responsible for the 2015 privatization of TAP, carried out in the PSD/CDS government, after it was revealed that David Nieleman carried out the operation with the airline’s own money.

Speaking to reporters in the Assembly of the Republic after the meeting of the PS parliamentary group on Thursday, Eurico Brillante Diaz considered this a matter of “extreme seriousness” and recalled that the privatization in question was carried out by the 20th constitutional government, the second led by former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who “was in power for less than a month”.

“Because this process was conducted by a government that had less than a month, a government that took office on October 30, 2015, if my memory serves me, and which closed the privatization on these terms on November 12, 2015, we are seriously considering calling political leaders who carried out this privatization in 2015,” he said.

Brillante Diaz mentioned that PS intends to understand TAP’s “airbus purchase operation” and “the political responsibility of a government that has been in office for less than a month and that privatized TAP twelve days after taking over.”

Eurico Brillante Díaz stressed that PS would request “additional information” about this privatization process “not only from TAP, but from the airline itself, and later assess whether it calls” the political leaders who were in power at the time of privatization” to a parliamentary commission on economics.

When asked who PS was considering coming and calling – and if that included Pedro Passos Coelho, then Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas – Brillante Díaz replied: “We are considering, but primarily who was in charge of TAP at the time.”

In the XX constitutional government, the Minister of Economy, at that time Miguel Morais Leitao, led TAP, and as Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications was Miguel Pinto Luz, the current Vice President of the PSD.

ECO reported Wednesday that four years after Atlantic Gateway, a consortium of David Nieleman and Humberto Pedrosa, acquired a 61% stake in TAP on June 12, 2015, Nieleman-led DGN signed a memorandum of understanding. with Airbus.

According to ECO news, the memorandum in question implied that TAP would cancel its contract with Airbus to “lease” 12 A350s and instead acquire 53 aircraft. ECO claims that the amount TAP will pay for the 53 aircraft in question is about US$254 million (currently around €238 million) above market value.

The paper also adds that, “according to the Atlantic Gateway,” Airbus “will provide $226.75 million in capital loans to DGN, which will be routed to TAP through the Atlantic Gateway,” corresponding to “the exact value of the largest tranche of supplies that will subsequently be placed on airline.”