PS acknowledges that members of the PSD/CDS government were placed in charge of the 2015 privatization.

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.

In statements to journalists in the Assembly of the Republic, after the meeting of the PS parliamentary group, Eurico Brillante Diaz reacted to the news published by the ECO newspaper on Wednesday, indicating that the privatization of TAP in 2015 will be completed. won by former shareholder David Neeleman with the airline’s own money.

The Parliamentary Leader of the PS felt that the matter was 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, and that it was ” in less than a month.”

“Because this process was carried out 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 Diaz stressed that PS will ask for “additional information” about this privatization process “not only from TAP, but from the airline itself, and later assess whether it calls “political leaders who were in power at the time of privatization” to the parliamentary economic Committee.

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 purchase 53 aircraft. ECO claims that the amount TAP will pay for the 53 aircraft in question is approximately $254 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.”