The Madeiran businessman Joe Berardo is suspected of having hidden assets from creditors, a line of investigation followed by the Public Ministry and the Judicial Police (PJ) in the investigation into the ruinous loans granted by the Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) to large debtors, like Berardo. This focus of the investigation is contained in the 2021 report on the Fight against Fraud and Tax and Customs Evasion, of the Tax Authority (TA), released last week, according to Correio da Manhã.
In the document, the tax authorities do not identify Berardo, but some information allows us to understand who he is referring to. The AT writes that, in 2021, during Operation Caixa, “two men aged 76 and 55 were arrested”. Last year, Berardo and the lawyer André Luiz Gomes were arrested by the PJ as part of the Caixa investigation.
“Currently, this economic group has caused a loss of almost one billion euros to CGD, to NB [Novo Banco] and BCP, having been identified events susceptible to criminal liability and dissipation of assets”, he writes. As early as 2021, a PJ statement spoke of the identification of “susceptible acts” of “dissipation of assets”.
Berardo. 140 thousand euros in bills and the family under suspicion
The tax report also indicates that the credits granted to various clients by CGD in breach of internal regulations “contributed directly to CGD’s losses.” These financings “forced the sole shareholder State to a first recapitalization [da CGD] for an amount of 1,650 million euros, in 2012, and a second recapitalization, in 2017, for an amount of 3,900 million euros”.
Joe Berardo is free from most coercive measures. Security deposit of five million remains
Source: Observadora
