“Certain Account” by Mário Centeno is launched Friday in Lisbon

ANDwritten by Mário Centeno himself, in partnership with journalist Filipe Santos Costa, the work, edited by the Author's Club, will be presented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation by historian José Pacheco Pereira.

In 470 pages, “Certain Accounts” adds the revelation of biographical elements to the description of the professional career of economist Mário Centeno until the time when he was invited by socialist José Vieira da Silva, in a pastry shop in Alvalade, to lead the ‘group of sages’ of the PS, at the end of 2014.

It is Centeno himself who counts, in the first person, episodes that occurred during the period of governance and during the preparations that preceded him, reporting, for example, that during the elaboration of the macroeconomic scenario with which in 2015 the PS would present the elections, he kept an image of Our Lady of Fatima in the workbook.

He did it waiting for the moment when it was necessary to “take it out of its quiet”, if “rationality failed” and he was obliged to deliver the coordination of the work to the saint because “this type of path needs an immaterial figure”.

“ It was never necessary to take her out of her peace, but she was present at all meetings ", wrote.

On the day he took office as Minister of Finance, he says that as soon as he arrived at the Terreiro do Paço he had the rugs removed and the sofas cleaned because in his office of the Ministry of Finance “everything seemed and smelled of the past”.

During his almost five years of governing functions, part of them as president of the Eurogroup, the former minister confesses that reaching the “right accounts” has cost him “a lot of work since birth”.

Throughout the book, it describes the passage through Finance from the preparation, “in apnea”, of the State Budget for 2016, the resolution of Banif, the relaunch of the sale of Novo Banco and the recapitalisation of CGD to the last Budget, the one of 2020, but also the first one delivered to parliament with positive balance forecast (the first surplus would be cleared in 2019).

In the middle, the “case António Domingues”, appointed to manage CGD for a salary of 30 thousand euros and that would provoke the first conflict with the then President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the dramatization of captivations, the election as president of the Eurogroup, the “most difficult” moment of the pandemic and the reasons that led him to make the decision to leave government functions in mid 2020.

After the 2019 election victory, Mário Centeno suggested that António Costa occupy “a transversal role” in the government that would allow him to “look at the health area” and make changes in his financial management, but the Prime Minister “heard and did not react.”.

The former minister would only know that his offer had been refused “before the new ruling cast was sent to the Palace of Bethlehem”.

Another delicate moment between Centeno and Costa will have been lived on the day of the transfer of 850 million euros from the Resolution Fund to Novo Banco, when Costa, in a public act with Marcelo, said he was not aware of the implementation of this injection that would depend on an audit that was not yet known.

The episode was only healed after the release of a statement clarifying “the failure of information” occurred and explaining that the Prime Minister reaffirmed the “personal and political confidence” in his Finance Minister.

“Right Accounts” ends with a reflection from the former Finance Minister on the conditions necessary to “guarantee economic development” of the country.