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<\/div><\/div>Picture: Armando.Info<\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/13092020-01C.jpg\")
<\/div><\/div>Picture: Armando.Info<\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\nOvernight, in the eyes of the tribunals and \r\nthe press in Lisbon, the 66-year old Caracas native has transformed into the \r\nmost colorful member of the cast of characters involved in the plot of the \r\nbankruptcy and intervention of the major Portuguese financial entity, the \r\nEspirito Santo Bank (BES). \r\n<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
This past 15th of July, after six years of \r\ninvestigation, the Portuguese prosecution office finally presented it\u00b4s \r\naccusation documents<\/a> regarding the case. The file consists of more than 4000 \r\nfolios which try to decipher the complexity of the fraudulent tissue that the \r\nhigh management of BES, led by its president Ricardo Salgado \u2013 famous in \r\nPortugal by the acronym DDT (short for Owner Of Everything<\/i> in Portuguese) \u2013 has \r\nthread for years in order to cover up the holes in the bank\u2019s balances. The \r\nfacts reported by the Public Ministry are succulent, but the narrative can turn \r\na bit tedious in between the details of financial engineering, debt papers \r\noperations and corporate governance entities. <\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
For the laypersons, however, the voluminous \r\nfile hides eight pages of mischief: the bizarre story of how Salgado recruits, \r\nthrough an intermediary, a professional con man, Jos\u00e9 Trinidad M\u00e1rquez, to \r\nimpersonate a high official of PDVSA for some of Salgado\u2019s colleagues and BES \r\nexecutives, who allegedly came from Caracas to offer the management of the \r\nafflicted bank \u2013 which by then, March 2014, was already in the final days before \r\nthe bankruptcy and the quest for liquidity was frantic \u2013 to fix a bidding for an \r\ninvestment fund of the Venezuelan state oil company, in exchange for the payment \r\nof certain expenses<\/i>. M\u00e1rquez played \r\nhis part to perfection and with the move earned himself a reward of 4,5 million \r\neuros, while Espirito Santo didn\u2019t take much longer to definitely collapse in \r\nAugust of 2014. <\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
Within the reach of anyone without strong \r\nfinancial knowledge, reading about this episode is delicious and captivating. It \r\nlooks like a draft version of a screenplay for a Hollywood film about classic \r\ncon artists, the likes of 1973 picture The Sting<\/i>, or the 2013 American Hustle<\/i>, in which the wit and \r\ncleverness the con artists put in play to make their victims fall for the decoy, \r\nconquer equally the sympathy of the audiences. Not in vain, the Portuguese press \r\nrushed to spread the story<\/a> in numerous front pages<\/a>, without pondering that the \r\ninvisible M\u00e1rquez \u2013 there are barely any photos of him \u2013 probably wouldn\u2019t end \r\nup looking as appealing as Robert Redford or Christian Bale. \r\n<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
What the Portuguese media overlooked is that \r\nM\u00e1rquez is not only a con artist that has turned deception of people into a way \r\nof life. In fact, since the 1990-ies he has accumulated an international \r\ncriminal record, which now includes Portugal too: he has been trialed in the \r\nUnited States, Spain and Venezuela, at least. In all those jurisdictions he has \r\nbeen sentenced, with awarded prison time in the two latter. He has always come \r\nout unhurt. How he manages to serve only short prison terms, go back to his con \r\nways, and maintain a lifestyle of the rich and the famous, just by pretending he \r\nis a petroleum expert, constitutes an adventure of more than two decades that \r\ncan only be explained by a certain resilience founded on a probable pathological \r\ntendency. \r\n<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
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