“The way to contain these jitters is clearly by giving this sign from the government that CGD’s past can be analysed at this moment of transition,” Centeno said at a news conference after the day’s cabinet meeting.
The minister was speaking after he announced that the Socialist government had ordered the new CGD board to take steps to opening an “independent auditor” into the management of the bank “from 2000”.
Centeno at no point directly cited his predecessor, Maria Luís Albuquerque of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), but the statement released after the cabinet meeting stressed that “members of the previous government, namely the ex-finance minister, raised doubts about the legality of management acts practised to 2015, relative to which they never requested additional information.”
CGD “cannot be a party political instrument” Centeno argued. “It is a company that functions in a very competitive market and we must all contribute to guaranteeing that Caixa is a solid, supervised bank.”
He said that the audit would be ordered “regardless of” the various existing oversight mechanisms at the level of national and European Union regulation and supervision.
“This process will be coordinated within CGD by the new board in the most natural way” he said.
“Audits are natural processes in the life of companies, in particular [those] with the economic and financial importance of those that operate in the banking system.”
In parliament the Social Democrat PSD accused the government and its left-wing allies of undermining democracy by raising doubts about the legality of its proposal to create a committee of inquiry into CGD and Banif another bank that was wound up and mostly sold off last year.
Speaking to journalists after a meeting of parliamentary leaders of parties, Luís Montenegro of the PSD vowed to ensure that the committee went ahead after left-of-centre parties voted to delay the constitution of the committee. The vote was taken after the speaker of parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues - a former Socialist Party leader - decided to send the PSD proposal to the attorney-general’s office requesting a written opinion on the legality and constitutionality of its objectives.
Rodrigues said that he wanted to see the committee set up during the current parliament, but only once any legal doubts have been cleared up.
Meanwhile the Socialist Party announced that it was scheduling a debate in parliament on the financial system including plans to inject fresh capital into CGD. In comments to journalists its parliamentary leader Carlos César played down Rodrigues’s move to send the PSD proposal for review, denying that his party was trying to block an inquiry and accused the opposition party of seeking to destroy the state bank.
The government has said that CGD needs several billion euros in fresh capital but has not given its estimate of the precise sum involved.