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Former chief executive of Banco Espirito Santo held defendant amid corruption probe

Xinhua, January 19, 2017 Adjust font size:

The former chief executive of Banco Espirito Santo, the lender of the Portuguese empire which collapsed in 2014, has been held defendant and is being interrogated by Portugal's Public Ministry, the Attorney General's office said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to the Attorney General's office, Ricardo Espirito Santo Salgado is suspected of committing crimes relating to corruption, breach of public trust, influence peddling, money laundering and tax fraud.

Salgado was held defendant on Wednesday morning and is being interrogated by the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action as part of Operation Marques, which led former Prime Minister Jose Socrates to be arrested in November 2014.

Socrates spent over 9 months in preventive prison, also having been accused of fiscal fraud, money laundering and passive corruption.

The family patriarch, Salgado, had been arrested on suspicion of fraud, money-laundering and document falsification back in July 2014, as part of the "Operation Monte Branco", a probe into alleged transfers to Switzerland.

He was released after paying a 4-million-U.S. dollar bail and then resigned after three decades as head of the lender, which had to be split into a "good bank" (Novo Banco) and a "bad bank" as part of a-4.9-billion-euro rescue in 2014.

According to local media reports on Wednesday, 23 million euros kept in Switzerland by former prime minister Jose Socrates' friend, Carlos Santos Silva, are at the center of the investigation.

The money, which had been transferred to his account in Portugal in 2004, 2010 and 2011, was declared by Santos Silva, however the country's public ministry suspects that the money actually belonged to Socrates.

Novo Banco is now up for sale, with the country saying that the top bid was from U.S. fund Lone Star amid five bids. The sale is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

There are 19 defendants involved in the Operation Marques. The investigation is scheduled to be completed by March 2017. Endit