Ricardo Salgado
Former Banco Espirito Santo SA Chief Executive Ricardo Salgado, who was recently detained in Portugal following a money-laundering investigation, has allegedly hidden part of his personal fortune in Singaporean bank accounts. The Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha reported yesterday that, in 2011, the former banker had EUR30 million in bank accounts in Singapore.
Funds in these accounts would seem to be “safe” from any potential seizure that could be ordered following lawsuits emerging from Salgado’s management of the bank and his family’s financial group.
Salgado is the patriarch of one of Portugal’s most prominent families.
Once Portugal’s largest lender by market value, the Banco Espirito Santo (BES) was recently split in two, with a “good bank” holding the healthy assets and “a bad bank” holding the riskier ones. Plans for a bailout began after BES reported a record loss of EUR3.6 billion in the first half of this year.
After regulators uncovered potential losses on loans made to other companies tied to the Espirito Santo family, BES was forced to take public money. The “good bank” will be loaned EUR4.9 billion from what was left of Portugal’s European Union-led bailout fund.
BES has interests in Macau, namely Banco Espirito Santo do Oriente (BESOR), which was created in in 1995. It was announced earlier this week that the BESOR will be integrated into the “good bank,” branded as “Novo Banco,” after Portugal’s central bank put a rescue plan in motion.
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