“Montepio does not comply with the decision and will adopt all the necessary measures to defend its best interests”, reads the information disclosed by the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM).


The PCA announced that it had sentenced 14 banks to pay fines totalling €225 million for sharing sensitive information on credit over a period of more than 10 years, between 2002 and 2013.


“In this scheme, each bank provided the others with sensitive information on its commercial offers, indicating, for example, the spreads to be applied in the near future in mortgage credit or the amounts of credit granted in the previous month, data that would otherwise not be accessible to competitors”, informed the competition regulator.


Montepio was sentenced to pay €13 million, half of the €26 million initially sentenced, as the bank joined the leniency programme, according to sources linked to the case.


CGD was the bank sentenced to the highest fine of €82 million, followed by BCP, which was sentenced to pay €60 million.
Santander Totta was sentenced to €35 million, in addition to assuming the fine of €600,000 from Banco Popular (which it had bought), and BPI to €30 million.


These four banks have already announced that they will appeal to the courts.


Barclays is exempt from the fine for having been the whistleblower in the case.


BES was fined €700,000. The responsibility to pay the amount lies with the ‘bad BES’ (currently in liquidation) and not with Novo Bank, since it has assumed the responsibilities of BES excluding those “arising from fraud or from the violation of regulatory, criminal or misdemeanour provisions.


The Crédito Agrícola Bank was sentenced to €350,000.


As for the other banks, according to information released today by the Expresso newspaper, BBVA Bank is sentenced to €2.5 million, BIC Bank (through BPN, which it acquired) to €500,000, Deutsche Bank to €350,000, UCI to a fine of €150,000 and Banif to €1,000.


Speaking to the Jornal Económico, the president of EuroBIC, Teixeira dos Santos (former Minister of Finance of the PS Government of José Sócrates), said that they were assessing the dispute, but considered that “responsibility for paying BIC’s fine lies with the State,” since it refers to acts performed by BPN before it was acquired by BIC.