Angola puts local unit of Portugal’s BES in administration

Angola has placed the local subsidiary of Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo under administration and revoked a state guarantee after its parent company collapsed, the central bank chief said Monday.

National Bank of Angola (BNA) governor Jose Massano announced the “application of extraordinary sanitation measures” to save Banco Espirito Santo Angola (BESA), one of the country’s biggest lenders.

Administrators will take control of the bank for one year and 500 billion kwanzas (3.8 billion euros, $5.1 billion) will be injected into the bank.

A state guarantee for the bank’s loans announced in December will also be withdrawn, he said, according to state-run news agency Angop.

“To ensure our support to BESA, the BNA has appointed some provisional administrators who will work, for one year, with the old administrators, to evaluate the bank’s situation from up close and find out the anomalies,” said Massano.

Portugal on Monday launched a new bank as part of a nearly 5.0 billion-euro rescue of Banco Espirito Santo (BES) to avert a national disaster and the threat of a fresh eurozone crisis.

BES was in dire straits after reporting a first-half loss of 3.57 billion euros last week — the worst ever reported in Portugal.

The bank was brought down largely by suspected improper accounting practices in the Espirito Santo Group built around three holding companies.

In May this year investigative news site Maka Angola reported that BESA gave 4.8 billion euros in toxic loans to senior officials of ruling party MPLA, which the bank was struggling to recoup.