The telecoms and media group Altice is shaken by the arrest of one of its figures: Armando Pereira was caught in a vast dragnet carried out Thursday July 14 in Portugal by the Central Department of Investigation and criminal action (DCIAP). This service searched ninety places, including the headquarters of Altice Portugal and the home of Mr. Pereira. “The investigation relates to facts likely to constitute crimes of corruption in the private sector, tax evasion, forgery and use of forgery and money laundering”, said the DCIAP in a press release. Mr. Pereira is suspected of having enriched himself within the framework of contracts signed between the telephone operator (holder in France of SFR) and service providers held by relatives.
Contacted, Altice does not comment. But the group quickly suspended executives suspected of being connected to the affair: Alexandre Fonseca, co-CEO of the Altice group and chairman of the board of directors of Altice USA and former leader of Altice Portugal, as well as Yossi Benchetrit , head of supplies for Altice USA and son-in-law of Mr. Pereira. Also arrested were businessman Hernani Antunes, his daughter Jessica and economist Alvaro Gil Loureiro. Altice has also frozen payments with the sixty entities involved in the investigation.
Altice and the Portuguese tax authorities victims
Among the transactions that interest the investigators is, according to the Portuguese press, the sale of buildings belonging to Altice, for an amount of 15 million euros, as well as television broadcasting rights contracts with local football clubs, according Journal de Noticias. The DCIAP gives a first estimate of damage of 100 million euros, citing Altice and the Portuguese tax authorities as victims.
Discreet, Armando Pereira is one of the oldest traveling companions of Patrick Drahi, whom he met in 1991 then followed in 2002 in the creation of Altice. Within the cable and then telecoms group, this faithful was known as the specialist in technique and costs – and sometimes decried for his restructuring methods considered brutal. A time deputy general manager of SFR in France, Mr. Pereira had no official function in the group for two years but continued to accompany it for missions. He returned to SFR’s French headquarters in the summer of 2022.