Lisbon court acquits ex-BES chief Ricardo Salgado in Banco do Brasil bribery case

The verdict

On Monday, 20 July 2026, the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon acquitted all defendants, including former Banco Espírito Santo (BES) president Ricardo Salgado, in a case concerning alleged corruption of a former vice-president of Banco do Brasil. The court ruled that the prosecution had not presented sufficient evidence to support charges of corruption harming international trade and money laundering. The trial had begun on 20 May 2025. The former Banco do Brasil official, Allan Simões Toledo, was not a defendant in this proceeding.

The allegations

Prosecutors accused Salgado of orchestrating a scheme between 2011 and 2014 in which he paid $1.8 million (approximately €15.7 million at current exchange rates) to Toledo through offshore entities. The payment was allegedly made via an account at ES Bankers in Dubai, held in the name of Travbell Assets, SA, an offshore company created by Paulo Murta, a shareholder and employee of ICG Wealth Management, a firm with close ties to Salgado. In return, the Banco do Brasil approved a $200 million (nearly €175 million) credit line for BES at a time when the Portuguese bank was already facing severe financial difficulties. BES collapsed in 2014.

Salgado's health and defence

Ricardo Salgado, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, has been deemed by the courts incapable of understanding or serving a sentence. His lawyer, Francisco Proença de Carvalho, told reporters outside the Campus de Justiça that Salgado "should not have been tried" because he "doesn't even know he had this victory."

He is in a state of dementia and therefore could not exercise his defence in a minimally normal way.

Proença de Carvalho described the prosecution as an "unfounded accusation" driven by "purely personal conviction" from part of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which he said had engaged in "a kind of competition of accusations." He added that since Salgado is "recognised with Alzheimer's and demented, the discussion of the facts is absolutely irrelevant." The lawyer also argued that Salgado "is being subjected to absolutely degrading treatment by the Portuguese state" and that "any trial, especially from 2021 onwards, is an unjust trial."

What comes next

The acquittal is final unless the Public Prosecutor's Office decides to appeal. Given Salgado's health condition, any further proceedings would likely face the same legal obstacles. The case is one of several legal battles involving the former BES chief, whose bank's 2014 collapse triggered a €4.9 billion rescue and years of litigation.