In Portugal, back-to-school is proceeding gloomily.
Focus on portugal in this new issue of European microphone With Ana Navarro Pedro, Portuguese journalist and correspondent in Paris.
franceinfo: Going back to school again is very sensitive for the Portuguese?
Again yes, like last year. This year, it was once again inflation that is causing massive anxiety among households. The household and investor confidence index is falling and is in free fall with back to school. This does not bode well. Doctors are also on strike in some areas of Portugal, they want more investment in the National Health Service, and they want to review their salaries, according to the loss of purchasing power due to inflation.
And the prime minister is not a star anymore?
Mr. Antonio Costa, our dear Prime Minister, who was the idol of the European left, and the idol of Portugal, because he really gave hope to this country, and he has done something for the country since 2015, well, there may be an erosion of power. He may have other concerns. He may have other ambitions, but anyway, the right says “there’s no more captain on the plane,” and maybe… they don’t talk about early elections, but still…
And then Armando Pereira, the Portuguese billionaire, very poor, arrives in France, and there’s the Portugal scandal…
This is the biggest scandal of the summer in Portugal. He was the second-in-command at Altice, Patrick Drahe’s big group, in France, and SFR, among others, was well positioned for the company. In a great scandal, the Portuguese authorities put him under house arrest. He and some other top executives from Altice, Portugal, are suspected of corruption and tax evasion. Tax fraud, because he was going to embezzle and make a lot of money, without declaring it to the Portuguese tax authorities. We are talking about 660 million euros.
Meanwhile, he would set up a whole chain of other shell companies, between Altice and Altice’s suppliers, to collect a back commission, and put it into companies of his own, in the free zone of Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic. And then in Dubai, in the Gulf, and therefore Altice itself suffered from prejudice, and the suppliers say that if they do not agree to pay this commission, they lose the case, simply everything, and would rather pay…
Is this what prompted Patrick Drahi to speak for once?
For once this summer, Patrick Drahe – as they say in Portugal, always arrives dumb and always leaves silent – broke his silence, and spoke about it, without ever mentioning Armando Pereira’s name. Indeed, he said, if the accusations turned out to be true, he would feel betrayed.
Armando Pereira was a 14-year-old Portuguese boy when he, like many immigrants, who made his fortune, arrived in France. A book celebrating his life in Portugal.
He wrote this book himself.Barefoot BillionaireIndeed, he arrived with nothing with his hands in his pockets in France and became a billionaire here. Which also means that France is the land of abundance. If you want…somewhere, if you take the trouble to go there, with perhaps a bit of luck getting to the time when the connections were changing, he’s entered the sector. There, when he had already set up a business selling equipment at France Telecom, he met Patrick Drahé, and the two founded Altice.
The Portuguese judicial team is a very well-known team.
Yes, I have already exposed cases of scandals, including those of former Prime Minister José Socrates, whose trial is still ongoing, of Portuguese entrepreneurs who had a system similar to the one I just described, but which ran through Switzerland. Sports club managers. This team is made up of seasoned men and women, and it wasn’t made for them. Then, to survive in Portugal, we have a network, and we don’t. Perhaps Armando Pereira was too greedy and arrogant. He may not have the network he needs.
