Lisbon, Nov. 5, 2024 (Lusa) - The former president of the auditing company KPMG Portugal, Sikander Sattar, acknowledged on Tuesday in the trial of the BES/GES case that he had directly accused the former accountant Machado da Cruz of fraud in the accounts of the Espírito Santo Group (GES).
Heard as a witness in the Lisbon Central Criminal Court, the former president of KPMG Portugal described the auditor's relationship with GES over time, and the various stages and procedures up to the collapse of BES in August 2014, focusing on the phase in which the 'hole' in the accounts of ES International (ESI, the holding company for the financial and non-financial areas) is realised and the "error" thesis initially put forward at the end of 2013.
"All the evidence we had at the time was confirmation of the error, but no evidence that the error was intentional," Sikander Sattar began by saying about the increase in ESI's liabilities, explaining that KPMG didn't carry out a forensic audit, but only a limited special purpose review, and that "even ESI couldn't get information about its investments, who the counterparties were or what the funds were."
The prosecution's questioning of this witness was occasionally interrupted by the president of the panel of judges. It was during one of magistrate Helena Susano's questions about how the error in the accounts was justified that Sikander Sattar revealed the details of a meeting on 14 January 2014, in which he confronted Machado da Cruz and argued that the thesis of the error was "not credible".
"The error was justified from the point of view that Machado da Cruz was too busy with other responsibilities he had in the group, that he didn't have a strong enough structure to be able to dedicate himself to ESI, that ESI's management wasn't real-time and that its directors had responsibilities in the financial (ESFG) or non-financial (RioForte) areas," he described.
Sikander Sattar said that it was then that he met the GES "commissaire aux comptes" (accountant), at a meeting that also included Ricardo Salgado, José Castella, João Martins Pereira, and Carlos Calvário. Machado da Cruz explained that it had been a mistake.
"I confess that I couldn't help myself and accused Machado da Cruz of having committed fraud," he said, while in the row of chairs for the defendants, the former GES accountant, who has been present at all the trial sessions, shook his head in the negative.
"As the error was being repeated systematically, I was already getting tired because it didn't seem credible. You can make mistakes in calculating impairments and forgotten invoices... now, in issues regulated by the CMVM, which BESI scrutinises and which were public issues - several over time and all omitted? Machado da Cruz wasn't happy and said he would take legal action against me. And when I'm threatened, I tend to repeat it, and I pointed out that he had committed fraud," he continued.
The presiding judge insisted on knowing whether Machado da Cruz took responsibility for the error, to which Sikander Sattar clarified that he did not. He added that the other participants' reaction to this accusation was "total silence".
The former chairman of BES, Ricardo Salgado, is the main defendant in the BES/GES case and is in court for 62 offences allegedly committed between 2009 and 2014.
In addition to Ricardo Salgado, 17 other defendants are also on trial, namely Amílcar Morais Pires, Manuel Espírito Santo Silva, Isabel Almeida, Machado da Cruz, António Soares, Paulo Ferreira, Pedro Almeida Costa, Cláudia Boal Faria, Nuno Escudeiro, João Martins Pereira, Etienne Cadosch, Michel Creton, Pedro Serra and Pedro Pinto, as well as the companies Rio Forte Investments, Espírito Santo Irmãos, SGPS and Eurofin.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the collapse of GES caused losses of more than €11.8 billion.
JGO/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
