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Portugal Infrastructure and Housing Minister Pedro Nuno Santos resigned from office Thursday overnight amid a major public outcry over a half-a-million euro severance check received by a government official from national airline company TAP, which was under his authority.
“In view of the public perception and sentiment around this case, the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Pedro Nuno Santos, intends, in this context, to assume political responsibility and presented his resignation to the prime minister,” Nuno Santos’ office announced in a statement. Prime Minister Antonio Costa accepted his resignation shortly after.
The controversy erupted after Portuguese daily Correio da Manhã revealed last week that then-Treasury Secretary of State Alexandra Reis had been granted “around 500,000€” in severance pay when she left the state-owned airline TAP last February.
TAP later confirmed the amount, forcing Reis to “promptly” accept a resignation request from her boss, Finance Minister Fernando Medina, on Tuesday.
Reis’s departure from the airline “was followed by TAP’s legal services and an external law firm,” the infrastructure minister office’s statement reads. There was “no information sent on the existence of legal doubts surrounding the agreement that was being signed, nor on other possible alternatives” to the half-a-million payment.
Yet, as Nuno Santos “became aware of the terms of the agreement, and in view of the doubts raised in the meantime, he asked TAP for explanations around this process.”
He then resigned after receiving said explanations “given the circumstances,” according to the statement.
Source: Politico
