Ex-TAP CEO claims she was scapegoated to save former PM’s bacon
The former CEO of TAP, Christine Ourmières Widener was dismissed from her job because former Prime Minister, António Costa’s “political survival” was at stake she alleges.
She has used the phone taps on António Costa as a headline to her opinion article alleging that she was the scapegoat by being fired to save the government which ended up falling following police Operation influencer in 2023 which brought down a sitting prime minister for the first time in Portugal’s history.
In the opinion article with the headline ‘It’s her or us’, which appears in today’s Expresso newspaper, the executive continues to insist that she was sacked without just cause. The phrase was allegedly used in a conversation with João Galamba after a €500,000 ‘golden handshake’ was authorised by the TAP CEO to be paid in compensation to former TAP director Alexandra Reis who later had to hand the money back.
“I do not say that the then Prime Minister was making a personal settling of scores, but rather (I was dismissed) at the exact point at which the decision ceased to be guided by the company’s management and began to respond to a logic of convenience and political survival, culminating in a dismissal without any just cause,” criticizes Ourmières-Widener in the article.
Almost three years after the dismissal of the Portuguese airline executive, following a report from the General Inspectorate of Finance, the former CEO of TAP criticizes the Executive of António Costa, recalling that she was hired to lead the company and that she put the airline’s accounts in the “black”, even given her low salary in the face of the challenge of making “difficult and unpopular decisions”, namely dismissals, the closure of TAP’s maintenance arm in Brazil and the negotiation of TAP’s restructuring plan with Brussels.
Christine Ourmières Widener’s seeking a multi six-figure payout settlement from the government through the courts.
SOURCE: Expresso
