Last week, the online newspaper Eco reported that about 45 workers left the BNI Europe bank (owned by the Angolan BNI) in recent months, following the failure of the sale to the Chinese group KWG and the deterioration of market conditions due to the crisis triggered by covid-19.
To Lusa, the bank's official source said that - after the failure of the capital sale operation and due to current and future market conditions - "it has been resizing its structure and mode of operation in order to provide it with greater functionality and internal/external articulation, along with improved efficiency/effectiveness and performance in a context of cost rationalization".
The bank "has reduced the total number of employees by about 40 percent, not expecting any more dismissals for the time being", he added.
Most of the workers who left, said an official source, were related to "outsourcing contracts that ended, people who left on their own initiative, among other situations", and there was also a collective dismissal that covered 10 employees.
At the moment, the bank has 70 workers.
As for results, BNI Europe had losses of 6.6 million euros, aggravating the losses of 800 thousand euros in the first half of 2019.
The bank also indicated that, on 30 June 2020, it had 252.1 million euros in customer deposits, which means a reduction of 106.5 million euros compared to 358.6 million euros in June 2019 (equivalent to a 30 percent drop in deposits).
Total net assets in June were 351.5 million euros, in this case 66.5 million less than in June 2019.
Still according to an official source, the share capital was 47 million euros, a figure that for the time being includes the capital increase of three million euros made in July this year.
Asked about the medium and long term business objectives, the official source said that the bank, despite adapting "some of its business lines to the present circumstances", which, together with the shareholder, "maintains the commitment to continue to provide products and services to its customers with the same standards of quality, accuracy and transparency that have guided their actions".
BNI Europe - whose executive president is Pedro Pinto Coelho - is owned by the Angolan International Business Bank (BNI), led by Mário Palhares, former vice-governor of the supervisor Banco Nacional de Angola.
The BNI made an agreement with the Chinese group KWG to sell 80 percent of the BNI Europe, but the deal did not go through.
In January, SIC published a report on Angolan capital banks operating in Portugal, reporting that Bank of Portugal inspectors had detected serious problems in preventing money laundering and preventing terrorism at EuroBic, BNI and BPA - Banco Atlântico Europa (where, according to the report, one of the main shareholders will be Manuel Vicente, Angola's former vice-president) and that for these three banks the technicians had proposed 38 administrative offences.
According to SIC, two of the banks in question, BNI and BPA, say they have never received information about the application of misdemeanors by the BdP.
In a clarification released after the report, the BdP indicated that it fully adopted the suggestions of the inspectors who found problems in Angolan capital banks in 2015 and 2016, and that it initiated administrative offence proceedings, which are currently in progress to evaluate the application of sanctions.
In April, the international non-governmental organization (NGO) Friends of Angola called on the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Portugal to proceed with a formal investigation or cancel the licenses of Portuguese subsidiaries of Angolan banks.
In a statement, the Angolan BNI said it did not respond to falsehoods and malicious insinuations, reiterating that it remains at the disposal of the authorities, and that "to the best of its knowledge, to date BNI Europe has not been the subject of any accusation or, even less, of a condemnatory decision by the Bank of Portugal regarding that inspection.
