Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

The Presidency of the Republic publishes the following Communiqué:

“In yesterday’s (Sunday, 29 April 2012) edition of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, several assertions and innuendos were published, all of them endeavouring to associate the name of the President of the Republic to the BPN bank.

These are all false assertions and innuendos that call into question the truth and offend the honour of the President of the Republic.

The Presidency of the Republic fully reasserts the text of the Communiqués it issued on 23 November 2008 and 1 February 2011, respectively.

1.1. Prof. Anibal Cavaco Silva, in the exercise of his professional life, before carrying out his current office (or later, as obvious):
a) never held any type of office in BPN or in any of its companies;
b) never received any remuneration from BPN or from any of its companies;
c) never bought from or sold anything to BPN or to any of its companies;
d) never contracted any loan with BPN

1.2 Prof. Anibal Cavaco Silva and his wife, in a framework of diversifying risks recommended by economic science, have for many years entrusted their savings to several banks – currently four – as comprised, in detail, in the Declaration of Assets and Income delivered to the Constitutional Court.

1.3 From December 2000, that is, more than five years before assuming office as President of the Republic, until June 2009, BPN was one of the banks that managed part of the savings of Prof. Cavaco Silva and his wife, and, throughout those years, diversified the respective financial applications.

1.4 Contrary to what has been asserted, the applications made by all the banks of the savings of Prof. Cavaco Silva and his wife have not resulted in gains, but in losses, as is anyway easy to conclude through the Declaration of Assets and Income deposited in the Constitutional Court.

II On the other hand, Diário de Notícias, in that same edition, insinuates that Prof. Cavaco Silva did not pay the Municipal Property Transfer Tax (Sisa) on the acquisition of his current family holiday residence, in the Algarve. This is false. Prof. Cavaco Silva is even convinced that he paid more than he should have done, since he has followed, until now, the practice not to place claims against settlements made by the Fiscal Authorities.

In July 1998, that is, approximately eight years before assuming office as President of the Republic, Prof. Cavaco Silva exchanged his previous holiday residence for an unfinished house, located elsewhere, and later, at his own expense, carried out much additional building work to complete the house and make it habitable.

The public deed of exchange expressly includes the prior request to the Fiscal Authorities to settle the amount of Property Transfer Tax, then in force.

As contained in the Communiqué of the Presidency of the Republic dated 1 February 2011, this was a perfectly legitimate and transparent transaction, identical to thousands of others, framed within both Civil and Fiscal Law.

III Diário de Notícias also intends to establish special links between Prof. Cavaco Silva and citizens that exercised professional activities in BPN or in some of its companies, due to the simple fact of having been members of governments by him presided.

The Governments presided by Prof. Cavaco Silva comprised 160 persons, who, as explained in his Political Autobiography, Volume I, were never chosen by criteria of friendship or personal acquaintance – even the choice of Secretaries or Under Secretaries of State was, as a rule, attributed to the respective Ministers – and whose activities after exercising governance duties cannot, obviously, be directly or indirectly connected with Professor Cavaco Silva.

Lisbon, Palace of Belém, 30 April 2012