Workers from the former Alicoop/N&F Group will go to Lisbon on Tuesday to protest with BIC/BPN and Banco de Portugal against undue charges related to the company's insolvency process, announced the Trade Workers Union, Portugal Offices and Services (CESP).
The workers will deliver written presentations to the president of BIC/BPN and to the governor of Banco de Portugal, «demanding that the persecution of the workers of the former Grupo Alicoop/N&F must end».
According to the Union, the workers want the BIC to "cease the persecution, end the communications and executive proceedings, and return the money unduly charged to workers and return the documents that it should no longer have in its possession, namely the promissory notes, signed in blank".
The workers will also demand that Banco de Portugal «exercise its behavioral supervision powers in relation to the BIC/BPN, and give directions to the Services of the Responsibilities Centre, to carefully analyze the exercise of its functions, which are not mere the dispatch desk of the private bank, and put an end to the persecution of the ex-Alicoop workers and remove them from the list of defaulters».
The Union recalls that, in February 2008, 245 employees of the Alicoop Group, which included the Alisuper, Macral and Geneco supermarkets, took out loans from BPN in the amount of 1,7 million euros, in a concerted manner with the administration of Alicoop for finance the company, assuming the commitment to the workers to pay the installments of the loans.
The Alicoop Group, which received the funds directly from BPN – acquired in 2012 by the BIC bank – for the capital increase of Urbisul, a loan that would be paid in 120 monthly installments, complied with payments until entering into insolvency proceedings.
According to Maria José Madeira, regional director of CESP, 221 people are facing pledges from BIC bank to pay loans made in 2008 to finance the company's treasury, this “after the Silves court relieved them of their liabilities in the the company's insolvency process in 2012».
In the insolvency proceedings that took place at the Silves Court, which became final in March 2012, the credits, with the express agreement of BPN, «were assumed by the Nogueira group, which constituted N&F (Nogueira & Filhos), to make the Group viable Alicoop».
According to Maria José Madeira, on June 12, 2013, Banco BIC and the new company formed by Grupo Nogueira signed an «agreement to comply with the benefits approved under the insolvency plan, with a view to complying with the court decision, which will have been done. until N&F filed for insolvency», decreed in February 2016 by the Court of Viseu.
The union leader said that the BIC bank went to the N&F insolvency process to claim its credits, but "has once again asked the workers who took out the loans to be responsible, as there are already people with processes of foreclosure of houses, cars, wages and furniture, which are being challenged'.
Therefore, CESP accused Banco de Portugal of, in this case, not having "fulfilled its banking regulation and control functions".
Recently, the Municipality of Silves, where the Alicoop Group was headquartered, expressed its solidarity with the workers.
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