MADRID — The problems of Portugal’s most powerful family deepened Thursday when Ricardo Espírito Santo Silva Salgado, the patriarch and the former head of its bank, was arrested and ordered to post bail of 3 million euros by a judge leading one of the country’s main money laundering and tax evasion cases.
Mr. Salgado, 70, was arrested early Thursday at his home on the outskirts of Lisbon and then taken to a closed-door courtroom hearing. The case involves a three-year investigation, code-named Monte Branco by prosecutors, centering on the activities of a Swiss asset manager working mostly on behalf of Portuguese clients.
The public prosecutor’s office did not explain why Mr. Salgado was brought back to court Thursday as part of the Monte Branco case.
But his arrest came a week after Mr. Salgado was forced to step down as executive chairman of Banco Espírito Santo amid concerns over the bank’s exposure to other indebted companies controlled by the Espírito Santo family, as well as to billions of euros in loans made by its bank in Angola.
The Swiss asset management company at the center of the prosecutors’ investigation, Akoya, has a large Portuguese clientele. It is partly owned by Álvaro Sobrinho, an Angolan businessman who is the former chief executive of Banco Espírito Santo’s Angolan bank, known as BESA.
The investigation, apparently taking its code name from the Portuguese version of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, began in 2011 to establish whether Akoya had helped clients to launder money and avoid taxes. Mr. Salgado appeared as a witness in the case last year, but denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with any crime.
His arrest Thursday, though, could indicate that prosecutors are now intent on re-examining the Espírito Santo family’s Angolan connections. On Thursday, Espírito Santo Financial Group, one of the family’s holding companies, filed for bankruptcy protection, according to Bloomberg News, bringing to three the number of companies related to the group that are seeking protection from creditors.
In addition to having to post bail of $4.1 million, Mr. Salgado was ordered not to leave the country.
The Portuguese authorities have tried to reassure investors that the family’s debt problems could be ring-fenced and would not threaten the solvency of Banco Espírito Santo, which is now being run under management appointed by the Portuguese central bank, and that they do not pose a threat to other Portuguese banks.
But regulators and the public prosecutor’s office are also investigating possible fraud and accounting irregularities within the various holding companies controlled by the Espírito Santos, not only in Portugal and Luxembourg but also at a Miami-based subsidiary of the Portuguese bank.
The investigation of the Miami bank, in turn, is also examining the activities of Espírito Santo bankers in Panama and Venezuela, according to reports in the Portuguese media.
The family-controlled empire’s debt problems have also reverberated with other corporations and lenders. Last week, one of the family’s holding companies, Rioforte, prompted the renegotiation of a merger between Portugal Telecom and Oi of Brazil, after Rioforte failed to make a scheduled repayment of a €900 million loan from Portugal Telecom.
Mr. Salgado led Banco Espírito Santo for more than two decades, wielding enough political and economic influence to make him known in Portugal as “O dono disto tudo,” or “Owner of everything.”
He had been due to step down this summer, following a battle for control between different branches of his family. But his departure was abruptly moved forward after the family group’s debt problems started to surface and rattle investors earlier this month.
Under a deal engineered by Portugal’s central bank, Vítor Bento, an executive from the banking industry, replaced Mr. Salgado at the helm of Banco Espírito Santo last week.
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