Lawyer Diogo Lacerda Machado, who negotiated the reversal of TAP’s privatization, will be heard this Thursday by the airline’s commission of inquiry as a former administrator, a position he left in April 2021.
Diogo Lacerda Machado informally represented the government in several sensitive negotiations, including one to change the TAP privatization carried out in the last phase of the PSD/CDS-PP government led by Pedro Passos Coelho.
Negotiations between the gerinçonça government (PS backed by PCP and BE) and the Atlantic Gateway consortium owned by Humberto Pedrosa and David Nieleman, which acquired 61% of TAP, led to a reconfiguration of the shareholder structure. reducing the private share to 45% and increasing the state share to 50%.
The controversy surrounding the informal regime in which he participated in these negotiations prompted António Costa to sign a contract with a lawyer and his personal friend.
At a parliamentary hearing at the request of the SDP, which demanded an explanation about the process and its role as a “facilitator”, also the former Minister of Justice said that he had begun negotiations on the reconfiguration of TAP shareholders with private companies. the day after the inauguration” António Costa “at the request and at the direction of the Prime Minister” and the then Minister of Planning and Infrastructure, Pedro Marquez, to whom he provided “technical support because he was convinced” that 30 years of experience as a lawyer and “knowledge of the issues commercial aviation can be useful to the Government and the country”.
Lacerda Machado, known as António Costa’s “best friend”, later took over as TAP’s non-executive director, leaving the administration in April 2021, before his term expired.
According to Expresso, then-infrastructure minister Pedro Nuno Santos and Lacerda Machado “did not agree for months on the company’s strategy,” with António Costa even “stepping in to correct the minister.”
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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