Head of Portuguese Airline TAP Sacked after Scandal

Madrid — The government of Portugal has dismissed the head of the ailing state-owned airline TAP, which has been rocked by several scandals.

The French chief executive Christine Ourmières-Widener and the chairman of the board of directors Manuel Beja were dismissed, Finance Minister Fernando Medina told journalists in Lisbon on Monday evening.

Medina praised the work of the previous company management, but also stressed: "It was necessary to restore the relationship of trust between TAP and the country and the Portuguese."

He added that they now wanted to concentrate on the announced privatization of the airline.

The dismissals followed several irregularities at TAP - but primarily they had to do with a controversial severance package of about €500,000 ($533,740) that senior manager Alexandra Reis received when she left last year.

After investigating the case, the Inspectorate General of Finance (IGF) concluded that the payment was not justified, Medina said. "We had to come clean." The affair had "caused a justified outrage in the country." The amounts that had been wrongly transferred would now have to be repaid.

Because of the scandal, which was uncovered by the newspaper Correio da Manhã in December, Reis lost her new post as secretary of state in the Ministry of Finance after only one month.

The left-wing government of Prime Minister António Costa had asked the airline for explanations. However, these had not convinced Lisbon, which is why the investigation was commissioned by the IGF.

Founded in 1945, TAP is Portugal's largest airline and has about 6,600 employees - about 2,000 fewer than before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

The company was last in the black in 2017, with record losses in 2020 and 2021.

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