The former president of the auditing company KPMG, Sikander Sattar, took over this Tuesday in the trial of the BES/GES case, which directly accused the former accountant Machado da Cruz of fraud in the accounts of the Espírito Santo Group (GES).
Heard as a witness at the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon, the former president of KPMG Portugal described the auditor’s relationship with GES over time and the various stages and procedures until the collapse of BES in August 2014, focusing attention on the phase in which who realizes the ‘hole’ in the accounts of the company ES International (ESI, the holding company for the financial and non-financial areas) and the “error” thesis initially advanced at the end of 2013.
“All the evidence we had at that 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 did not carry out a forensic audit, but only a limited special purpose review, and that “even ESI could not obtain information about its own investments, whose counterparties they were, or which funds.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office’s inquiry into this witness was occasionally interrupted by the president of the panel of judges and it was in one of the questions from judge Helena Susano about how the error in the accounts was justified that Sikander Sattar revealed the details of a meeting on January 14, 2014 , in which he confronted Machado da Cruz and argued that the error thesis was “not credible”.
“The error was justified from the perspective that Dr Machado da Cruz was very busy with other responsibilities he had in the group, that he did not have a strong enough structure to be able to be dedicated to ESI, that the administration of ESI was not timely management real and that its directors had responsibilities in the financial (ESFG) or non-financial (RioForte) area”, he described.
Sikander Sattar said that it was then that he met the ‘commissaire aux comptes’ (accountant) of GES, in a meeting where Ricardo Salgado, José Castella, João Martins Pereira and Carlos Calvário were also present, with Machado da Cruz explaining that it had been a mistake .
“I confess that I couldn’t contain myself and accused Machado da Cruz of having committed fraud”, revealed the witness, while in the row of chairs reserved for the defendants the former GES accountant, who has been present at all trial sessions, swayed the head in a negative sign.
“As the error was being repeated systematically, I was getting tired, because it didn’t seem credible. Errors can be made in impairment calculations, forgotten invoices… now, in issues regulated by the CMVM, which go through the scrutiny of the BESI and that they were public broadcasts – several over time and all of them omitted? Machado da Cruz was not pleased and said he was going to file a lawsuit against me”, he continued.
The presiding judge insisted on finding out whether Machado da Cruz took responsibility for the error, to which Sikander Sattar clarified that he had not, adding that the reaction to this accusation was “total silence” from the other participants.
The former president of BES, Ricardo Salgado, is the main accused in the BES/GES case and is responsible in court for 62 crimes, 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, in addition to the companies Rio Forte Investments, Espírito Santo Irmãos, SGPS and Eurofin.
According to the MP, the collapse of the GES will have caused losses of more than 11.8 billion euros.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
