Lisbon, July 10, 2025 (Lusa) - The secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party today challenged the other parties to approve a draft resolution that parliament will vote on this Friday to protect Novo Banco, considering the sale otherwise an “economic crime”.
The Portuguese Communist Party presented this draft resolution in June, recommending that the government, in addition to halting the sale of Novo Banco, also regain public control of it, to put it “at the service of the country’s development”.
Speaking to journalists in parliament, Paulo Raimundo said that the sale of Novo Banco to the French banking group BPCE is a “crime in progress”, pointing out that every Portuguese taxpayer paid for the bank.
“The state paid for this bank, and an American economic group [Lone Star] took it over. That American group assumed the assets, managed them as it saw fit, at its leisure, and offered them to whomever it wanted, however it wanted. And so it did: it sold the bank to a French group,” he said.
Paulo Raimundo pointed out that, in practice, Lone Star “received Novo Banco without contributing any funds of its own,” yet will hand it over “clean and new,” after the group secures taxpayers’ money, to the French group BPCE.
“What we think is that it is still possible, and we can reverse this process that is underway. We have an opportunity to do so: we have taken an initiative in this regard in Parliament, Parliament will vote on it tomorrow [Friday], and Parliament must halt this economic crime,” he said.
For the secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party, given that it was the state that bore the costs of Novo Banco, it should now also “have the benefit and put the bank at the service of the economy, the development of the economy and the country”.
“This was the obligation. Let’s see how the other parties behave. We know that they devalue our initiative; we also know that they acknowledge a loss of more than €6.3 billion from our pockets as reasonable. We consider a different approach more reasonable: we prefer an alternative to this hole and to this option that is currently underway,” he said.
Lone Star has reached an agreement with the French banking group BPCE to sell its stake in Novo Banco for an amount equivalent to a valuation of €6.4 billion for 100% of the share capital.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026.
The government has also announced that it will follow Lone Star’s sale, disposing of the 11.46% of Novo Banco’s capital that the Ministry of Finance directly controls, which is expected to yield around €733 million.
The Resolution Fund holds the remaining 13.54%, which could pocket around €866 million from the deal.
TA/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
