The government has since come to an agreement with Atlantic Gateway to limit its stake to 50 percent.
In a statement released earlier this week, the association Peço a Palavra says that it had held a meeting with the secretary of state for infrastructure, Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins, on 13 July, and informed him of its decision to reactivate legal submissions already lodged at the attorney-general’s office and the Supreme Administrative Court.
According to the association, this is justified by the fact that, “after seven months in power, the government has not yet demonstrated that it intends effectively to retake effective control of TAP.”
The company, it says, “remains in the hands of Mr David Neelman [chief executive of Atlantic Gateway], as is easily shown by the transactions completed in the meantime and which are totally against TAP’s continuity as a sustainable and autonomous business group.”
The association “has decided to communicate to the Supreme Administrative Tribunal that it did not want to maintain the temporary suspension of the actions interposed against the previous government, which aim at annulling the privatisation of TAP” and will proceed with the criminal complaint submitted to the attorney-general’s office last year “denouncing an alleged practice of crimes committed by the Atlantic Gateway consortium, by [state holding company] Parpública and by two members of the previous government”, the statement says.
According to the association, the secretary of state assured its representatives at their meeting with him that the bank guarantees that “the previous caretaker government” in power took on when the privatisation was finalised in the name of the Portuguese state, “will cease to exist, with the part of the debt corresponding to the value of the shares held by the state now being exclusively taken on by Atlantic Gateway.”
Oliveira Martins also stressed, according to the association, that the agreement signed in May by the government and Atlantic Gateway contains clauses that “make possible the recovery of all the share capital of TAP”.
Under the agreement Atlantic Gateway, which had 61 percent of TAP’s shares under the original privatisation process, is now to have 45 percent, with the option of reaching 50 percent if it acquires all the shares available to employees. In its statement, Peço a Palavra notes that the five percent shares for employees have not yet been distributed.
The agreement also foresees that six board members are appointed by the state and six by Atlantic Gateway, with the state appointing the chairman, who is to have the deciding vote in the event of a tie.
Among measures taken recently by the company and which the association Peço a Palavra criticises, are the change of routes in order to cede to Azul, a company owned by David Neelman, TAP aircraft that were not being used, the start of code-sharing with Azul “with loss of profitability and autonomy on the part of TAP” or the “ceding of advantageous contractual positions in the acquisition of aircraft without compensation for TAP”.