Manuel Pinho

Manuel António Gomes de Almeida de Pinho (born 28 October 1954) is a former Portuguese Minister of Economy and Innovation (2005–09) in the José Sócrates cabinet, who subsequently became an energy policy academic (2010–17) under circumstances that led to indictments in Portugal in 2017 and 2019, to house arrest since 2021, and to multiple charges of passive corruption, tax fraud, and money laundering in 2022.

According to those charges, Pinho received, while in office, at least 4.5 million euros in secret monthly offshore payments from his prior and subsequent boss Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado whose Espírito Santo Financial Group benefited from several of Pinho's decisions as minister.

Pinho was born in Lisbon in 1954 and graduated from the Technical University of Lisbon in 1975.

He obtained a Doctorat de Spécialité (3e cycle) in economics at the Université Paris X Nanterre in 1982, which he holds as equivalent to a Ph.D.

He returned to Portugal to teach at the Technical University of Lisbon and the Catholic University of Portugal; and in 1985 went to work as a staff economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. He returned to Portugal in 1988 to become a management-level banker at the Portuguese subsidiaries of Manufacturers Hanover and Credit Lyonnais.

Between 1991 and 1994, Pinho was Director-General of the Portuguese Treasury and his tenure coincided with the second and final stage of the privatization of Banco Espírito Santo, which he joined right after he resigned from the Treasury in 1994.

Pinho was between 1994 and 2005 a top operative of Portugal's defunct Espirito Santo Financial Group (ESFG).

He was initially hired as the group's head of research and capital markets and quickly rose to become a full member of the executive board of Banco Espírito Santo in charge of key financial operations areas.

Pinho entered government politics in the early 2000s when he started contributing to Portugal's opposition Socialist Party economic agenda for the 2005 legislative elections.

As a result, when Pinho became minister in 2005, it was widely believed that it had been due to the influence of Salgado, who would publicly deny it a decade later.

However, Salgado continued to secretly pay Pinho 14.963,94 euros per month while Pinho was minister, in addition to hiring Pinho's second wife to oversee the bank's newly started modern photography collection, thus ensuring that Pinho remained bound to the ESFG while he was minister.

Against this background, some of the decisions Pinho took as minister were criticized for benefiting ESFG, such as the sale of Portugália Airlines, the SONAE Group's failed tender offer for Portugal Telecom where ESFG was the largest minority shareholder, or Pinho's dealings with EDP-Energias de Portugal that was chaired by another former ESFG top operative António Mexia.

Pinho's alleged favouring of EDP-Energias de Portugal when he awarded it the 26 year hydro-electricity buying monopoly bypassing the regular public bidding procedures would subsequently be considered by the European Commission and the Portuguese Court of Audits detrimental to the interests of the Portuguese treasury and electricity consumers.

According to Pinho's own court depositions, when he became minister in 2005 he had asked for an early retirement package from age 55, but, since the statutory age was 65, Salgado agreed instead to give Pinho the "no-show" job until he reached the applicable age.

In 2005 he was rewarded by Socialist Party President José Sócrates who allowed Manuel Pinho to run as an independent in the elections and placed him at the top of the Socialist Party list for the district of Aveiro thus ensuring his election.

Following the Socialist Party's victory in the elections, Sócrates became Prime Minister and invited Pinho to be Minister of Economy and Innovation in the new government.

As minister, Pinho attached priority to the full use of Portugal's existing renewable energy sources and development of new ones.

During his term in office, Portugal's installed capacity for wind-powered generation tripled from 1,000 to 3,000 MW and for solar-powered it increased from virtually nothing (3MW) to 60 MW.

He also launched an electric car program that sought to make Portugal the first country in Europe with a nationwide charging network, but the program was scrapped shortly after Pinho left government.

As energy minister of a European Union member country, Pinho contributed to the European Union's first Strategic Energy Technology Plan of 2007, that served as a blueprint for European development of low-carbon energy production.

However, Pinho was much criticized for his dealings with EDP-Energias de Portugal and its chairman Antonio Mexia, whom he had worked with at the ESFG.

Pinho, in a 2007 interview, described himself using the English expression "I’m the one they love to hate" referring to his critics.

As Minister, he also became known for being prone to political gaffes that drew him plenty of press and social media coverage and ultimately led to his resignation.

In 2008, Pinho promoted an experimental sea-waves powered generation station, but it failed after three months.

He is also remembered in Portuguese popular culture for an outburst in 2009 in the Portuguese Parliament that forced his resignation and was reported by mainstream media worldwide.

After resigning from his minister position in 2009, Pinho was rehired by the ESFG as vice chairman of its Banco Espírito Santo Africa subsidiary in what was later revealed to be a 39,000 euros a month no-show job that allowed Pinho to be away teaching in New York and elsewhere.

In 2010 Pinho was hired as an adjunct professor of International and Public Affairs by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs which coincided with a newly awarded Energias de Portugal (EDP) sponsorship that originated suspicions of Pinho improperly benefiting, by at least 1.2 billion euros, Portugal's EDP - Energias de Portugal electricity company in exchange for its sponsorship that Columbia University used to hire Pinho after he left government.

Since 2010 Pinho also lectured at other universities in the US, China and Australia.

Pinho's decisions to grant high price guarantees to renewable energy generation and a 26-year hydropower buying monopoly to EDP-Energias de Portugal were deemed "excessive" by the subsequent government, "non-competitive and undervalued" by the European Commission that opened an official inquiry in 2013, and "contrary to the public interest" by the Portuguese Court of Audits in 2016.

He also quickly won the trust of one of the bank's senior shareholders and Espirito Santo family scion Ricardo Espírito Santo Salgado who would become the bank's next chairman and Pinho's mentor in his family-controlled Espirito Santo Financial Group publicly saying in 2014 that Pinho was "a good financier" and had "delivered great services."

Pinho's relationship with the ESFG soured in 2014, when he demanded early payment of his pension benefits in anticipation of the collapse of ESFG, which happened shortly afterwards.

His pension withdrawal request was refused by the new management of Novo Banco, the entity that took over the ESFG, and, in 2015, Pinho sued Novo Banco and the former ESFG pension fund for 7.8 million euros consistent with his claim of a lifetime pension of 21,000 euros per month pension from age 65.

In response, the Novo Banco cut his 39,000 euros per month BESA salary to 3,000 euros (2,000 euros according to other sources ), which led Pinho to rescind his contract and file a second lawsuit to obtain compensation in line with the original salary amount.

In 2016, Pinho lost both lawsuits.

In 2016, Pinho was first referenced in the Panama Papers leaks as having received 180,000 euros in offshore payments from a shell company for the ESFG.

Pinho stopped lecturing at Columbia after a preliminarily indictment against him and top EDP managers in 2017, but as of January 2023 none of them has been formally charged in this regard.

In June 2017, it also became the subject of a corruption investigation by the Portuguese Judicial Police that indicted Pinho, Mexia, and Salgado.

In 2018 it was revealed that Pinho had held at least four offshore secret bank accounts in his name, including one in Panama (named “Tartaruga Foundation”) into which he had received 3.5 million euros in under-the-table payments from his former boss Ricardo Salgado between 2006 and 2014, including at least 778,000 euros while Pinho was government minister and bound by office not to receive income from other sources, which led to indictments in Portugal on passive corruption and influence peddling charges.

In 2021 the Pandora Papers investigation confirmed the existence of three of Pinho's offshore accounts (Tartaruga Foundation, Mandalay and Blackwade Holdings) and that he had used one of them (Blackwade Holdings) to transfer funds to buy and an apartment in New York in 2010.

It also revealed that his wife Alexandra Pinho was a co-title holder to those accounts.