Carlos da Silva Costa: Banco de Portugal - strongly committed to rigorous banking supervision

Initial address by Mr Carlos da Silva Costa, Governor of the Bank of Portugal, to the Committee on Budget, Finance and Administrative Modernisation, Lisbon, 23 March 2017.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
04 May 2017

Madam Chair,

Members of Parliament,

I called for this hearing following a series of reports on television about the monitoring work undertaken by Banco de Portugal - as supervisory authority - on Banco Espírito Santo (BES) in the months leading up to its resolution in August 2014. These reports gravely misrepresented the reality of that monitoring, explicitly discrediting Banco de Portugal's exercise of the supervisory function.

As I stated in my letter to this Committee, it is my responsibility as Governor of Banco de Portugal to defend the reputation of the institution and protect public confidence in the effectiveness of banking supervision. I see it as my duty to restore the truth behind these facts and to clarify what the reports deliberately ignore, making myself accountable to the Assembly of the Republic.

In my view it is undeniable that, from the outset, Banco de Portugal was committed to being accountable to the Assembly of the Republic, transparently and in good time, in regard to the resolution of BES. Banco de Portugal actively collaborated with the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in fact-checking, by providing several depositions, and an immense set of documents that was requested.