Lacerda answers Souto and says that the leadership of the government has been withdrawn.

Former TAP administrator Diogo Lacerda Machado relativized this Saturday Secretary of State Alberto Souto’s “unreasonable focus” on a “lead” to the company’s budget as it was later withdrawn.

Hours after Alberto Souto admitted that at the request of then infrastructure minister Pedro Nuno Santos, he had instructed the administrator to vote against the air carrier’s budget, Lacerda Machado stated that the orientation was “so unreasonable” that “it was not the only person appointed state to include 2022 TAP accounts,” contrary to state guidance.

In a written clarification sent to Luce, Diogo Lacerda Machado, who on Thursday admitted he was pressured by Alberto Souto while he was at TAP, said there was a joint conversation between the then assistant secretary of state for communications and the appointed administrators. from the state – himself, Miguel Frasquillo, Bernardo Trindade, António Meneses, Ana Piño and Esmeralda Dourado.

“The voting guidance handed down by the Secretary of State will effectively be withdrawn,” Lacerda Machado said in a statement, without further explanation of what happened.

In a Facebook post, the former secretary of state said the former administrator “threatened to resign but didn’t.”

Lacerda Machado explained this Saturday that since the carrier’s budget “failure” manual has been withdrawn, he has not stepped down from his post.

The controversy began Thursday during a commission of inquiry into the political oversight of TAP’s leadership when Diogo Moura Lacerda suggested there was political pressure when the secretary of state asked him to vote against the airline’s budget.

“I said I won’t do it,” Lacerda Machado added, saying he explained to the government that the legitimacy of his decision “follows from the elections in the general assembly,” but if the executive understands this, he will resign. Position.

Alberto Souto admitted that he passed on instructions to the former TAP administrator on the company’s 2020 budget, but refused to put political pressure on current management.

“The norm is that once a year, precisely when the budget is approved, the shareholder talks with his representatives and indicates the position that they must convey,” wrote Alberto Souto.

“All publicly traded or state-owned companies” have guidance in policy documents, and “this is the point of healthy custody,” the former secretary of state wrote in the text.