AICEP (Portuguese Internationalization and Foreign Trade Agency) assures that already this year, and after an organic restructuring carried out by the management that took office in June 2023, it reinforced the procedures and activity of control and supervision of the application of European funds.

“The current board of directors, which took office on June 5, 2023, reinforced concern regarding the procedures and activity of AICEP with new control and inspection measures, even before the investigations and investigations that today were publicly announced. “they know each other,” assumes responses to the observer in the writing.

The so-called Operation Maestro, known in March of this year, investigates the allocation of European funds and the procedures that led to the delivery of support to companies linked to Manuel Serrão and Júlio Magalhães, for promotion in the clothing area.

Operation Master. Manuel Serrão suspected of living eight years in the Porto Sheraton at the expense of European funds

In this process, Compete, the company fund management authority, and AICEP ended up being investigated. To the Observer, AICEP guarantees that, “within the scope of control and supervision, the Agency carries out audits and periodic controls carried out on on-site projects, and, during the PT2020 community framework, the number of audits carried out on projects by the AICEP, as an intermediate body, increased, following the growth in the number of approved projects.”

They are also carried outexternal audits of AICEP performance and the good execution of projects by the beneficiaries by other entities, namely the Development and Cohesion Agency, the Managing Authorities, the General Inspectorate of Finance, the Court of Auditors, the European Court of Auditors, among others. others”.

Meanwhile, after Operation Maestro, the new minister in charge of European funds, Manuel Castro Almeida, announced in SIC Notícias his intention to carry out an investigation into European fund management services.

The Government wants to start an investigation into the services that manage European funds to find out if “there are cases of negligence or collaboration”

And, as AICEP revealed to the Observer, on April 30, “Compete contacted AICEP to inform it of a deliberation by the Development and Cohesion Agency, communicating that it will be developed a transversal action, as provided in the certification manual, with the objective of analyzing the procedures implemented by the entities involved in the ‘Joint Projects (SI) Internationalization+’ typology, which includes the intermediate body AICEP.” The entity directed by Filipe Costa guarantees that “all consultations are welcome, in its permanent search for improvement, of a general nature”, but with a warning: “being careful not to compete with judicial investigations, and AICEP naturally collaborates.”

In this concern to strengthen the mechanisms, AICEP tells the Observer that the new management already carried out an internal restructuring in the second half of 2023 and that it came into force on January 1 of this year. This restructuring meant a reduction in the number of departments and management positions, although four subdirectorates were created: two in the Legal Department (Contracting and Litigation) and two in the Audit Department (Control and Regulation and Compliance). Human resources were also reinforced in areas such as audit and compliance. AICEP management positions began to be elected through internal competitions, with a three-year service commission.

AICEP also reveals that in February it approved the implementation of annual physical verification plans for projects with incentives. They will be carried out by the Audit and Compliance Department, “an independent department that has no intervention in the internal administrative verification procedures,” he highlights.

The intricate world of European funds. How do they reach companies and how are they inspected?

PT 2030 and PRR with delays due to lack of payment tools

AICEP is an intermediate body in some European funding programs. Given the criticism from the beneficiaries for the delays in making the funds available, which have also been the target of attacks by the current Government – ​​which has already said that the PT 2030 and the PRR are “extraordinarily delayed” –, AICEP reports delays in tools by the management of the authorities so that it can proceed with the analysis of payment requests.

In data sent to the Observer, AICEP reveals that in the PT 2020, whose “execution was successfully completed and closed within the planned period”, 400 complaints from companies opposing the closure decisions are now being analyzed, which correspond, as a limit, to 22.39 million euros. Given that “the historical rate of origin of accusations is usually 20%”, the estimated investment is around 4.5 million euros.

In support of investment and the internationalization of companies, within the framework of PT 2020, almost 1.5 billion euros were “analyzed and processed.” This year around 90.6 million were paid.

In relation to PT 2030he 10% initial advances, for an amount of almost 3 million euros (2,931,753.89 euros) plus 2.7 million pre-orders in the approval circuit, which total 5.7 million euros. But AICEP indicates that it is moving forward with these advances at a time when “not IT tools were made available that will allow perform the analysis of payment requests. Tools that have to be created by other entities. El Observador assures that “the creation of these tools does not depend on the AICEP, which has insisted on their urgent making available to the competent authorities.”

Also in the PRR, AICEP points the finger at lack of analysis and payment tools. AICEP was designated as the managing entity of the Digital Commerce measure, within the framework of the business digitalization program. The measure has a provision of 23 million euros, with the objective of supporting 1,500 SMEs until the end of 2025 for their internationalization through electronic commerce. Two warnings have already been issued. A first, in August 2022, in which 239 projects were selected with an eligible investment of 10.7 million euros. In the second call, launched in August 2023, 863 applications were received: 379 in the first phase (the decision of which should be taken at the end of the first half of this year) and 484 in the second.

However, “The implementation of the measure has suffered various limitations, particularly in terms of availability of analysis tools and payment by the competent entity. in this matter,” says AICEP.

AICEP says staff travel and accommodation is normal…

As part of its foreign trade promotion activity, AICEP guarantees that the organization’s workers travel regularly. “It is part of the professional activity of AICEP workers move and stay in service actively participate in forums, congresses, fairs and missions, sometimes institutional, but in general with companies and business associationsin Portugal and abroad, specifically as speakers to present the national offer of a certain sector, or to connect national exporters with foreign importers, or to prepare customs, technical or health files for access to foreign markets (Product of Portugal Is Made in Portugal)”.

This happens abroad, but also in Portugal by the workers of the AICEP external network, which consists of “carrying out professional trips to Portugal, within the framework of business delegations, to follow the visits of foreign importers who come to national fairs (‘reverse missions’) or carry out contact programs with national suppliers, prepared by AICEP or sectoral business associations.”

In the case of Operation Maestro, the Public Ministry considered as an object of investigation the participation of AICEP employees in Associação Seletiva Moda events, paid for by the entity controlled by Manuel Serrão, who then attributed those expenses to the support programs of Compete.

…and projects of Potential National Interest (PIN) are not decided informally

Another case in which the AICEP ended up being the subject of searches refers to Operation Influencer, in which alleged favoritism towards Start Campus, which is installing a data center on AICEP land, in Sines, is being investigated.

AICEP maintains to the Observer that the PIN project regime, created in 2008, “came to replace the hitherto informal treatment of large projects with a formal forum host and process large national and foreign productive investments with a virtuous impact on the national economy, thus considered according to predefined criteria”, being, he adds, “a mechanism that replaced contacts ad hoc through scheduled meetings with minutes, where the licensing entities meet, evaluate the viability of the project and vote on the attribution or not of the PIN status and respective number, and optimize the licensing schedules within the strict scope of the applicable legal framework.

The Permanent Investor Support Committee (CPAI), coordinated by the AICEP and supervised by the Ministry of Economy, and which includes IAPMEI, DGAE, IEFP, Turismo de Portugal, APA, ICNF, CCDR and the Tax Authority, maintains the AICEP , is “just a licensing services conference,” not a mechanism for attributing fiscal or financial benefits. AICEP gives the example of Start Campus, which is supervised by CPAI “and does not have any application for parallel fiscal or financial benefits.”

Start Campus. The two funds that invested in the controversial Sines project (and guarantee that they will not give up)

CPAI is one of the operational investment points in Portugal. To attract this investment, AICEP indicates that “efforts begin with the creation of welcoming conditions, which allow us to compete internationally for more and better projects that create wealth, generate marketable goods with high capital and technology intensity, value skills and salaries. Portuguese.” These conditions include the existence of a “viable industrial use of the land”, the “promotion of licensing” and ensuring “the availability of accessibility and public services, with emphasis on interconnection and the provision of green electricity for the new industry “clean and the data economy”. explains the entity led by Filipe Costa, who before assuming the presidency of AICEP led the entity’s industrial park infrastructure, specifically AICEP Global Parques, which manages the land where Start Campus is located.