Antonio Mexia, a former government official in Portugal and once CEO of the country’s largest energy company, kept $5.9 million in assets in a previously unknown offshore company, according to new reporting by Expresso, an ICIJ partner. The revelations come as Mexia faces criminal cases on suspicion of corruption and other financial crimes related to his role as CEO of Energias de Portugal.
Among the millions of documents published as part of the 2021 Pandora Papers investigation, a bank account statement dated in 2017 revealed the existence of an offshore company, Miamex Ventures Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands. At the time, the beneficiary of the funds invested in the company was unknown. But recently, ICIJ and Expresso obtained a leaked client portfolio presentation made in 2019 to Boreal Capital Management, a wealth management and fiduciary services company in Zurich, that identified Mexia as a beneficiary of Miamex Ventures.
Account statements found by Expresso in the Pandora Papers reveal that in mid-2017 Miamex Ventures had $1.4 million in investment funds, $2.7 million in corporate bonds and $1.7 million in bank deposits, for a total market value of $5.9 million The documents analyzed by Expresso show that the funds were in an account managed by a Portuguese financial manager, Bernardo d’Orey, of EFG Capital. He did not respond to Expresso’s request for comment.
That year, Mexia became a defendant in an investigation by the Portuguese public prosecutor’s office, which was later divided into three criminal cases, all on suspicion of corruption and other financial crimes related to his time as CEO of the energy company EDP between 2006 and 2020, according to Expresso.
Miamex was dissolved voluntarily on May 28, 2020, according to an announcement published by a British Virgin Islands newspaper, Expresso reported. Four days later, the public prosecutor’s office questioned Mexia as part of the case against him.
Expresso reported Friday that the prosecutor did not know the offshore company existed and the information was not included in their case so far. Two of the three criminal investigations are expected to conclude soon. If convicted of corruption, Mexia could face time in prison. Through his lawyer, he declined to respond to Expresso’s request for comment.
Mexia “is very well known, very important, very powerful in the energy sector,” Expresso reporter and ICIJ member Micael Pereira said. “He was behind many of the decisions made in the last 15 or 20 years in Portugal in connection to one of the biggest sectors in the economy, the energy sector.”
“Because at this point we don’t know the origin of the money, the ongoing legal cases might be delayed until prosecutors get more information on this company,” Pereira added.
The Pandora Papers was a 2021 ICIJ investigation of a trove of more than 11.9 million confidential files. The documents were leaked from 14 offshore services firms around the world that set up shell companies and other offshore nooks for their clients, including royals, billionaires and hundreds of heads of state, politicians and public officials. ICIJ led a team of more than 600 journalists from 150 news outlets that spent two years sifting through the documents.
