TAP has accused the former chief executive officer (CEO), Christine Ourmières-Widener, of violating the exclusivity regime to which she was obliged at the airline, for having accumulated several positions in other companies, without informing or obtaining authorization.
According to TAP’s defense to the lawsuit filed by Christine OUrmières-Widener to contest her dismissal, to which Lusa had access today, the airline claims that the former CEO “held, throughout the period in which she held office as CEO of RÉS [TAP S.A. and TAP SGPS], a position as a director that she never revealed or that merited the assent of any of its shareholders or any representative of the Government.”
According to the document submitted by TAP’s defense to the Lisbon District Court, the former CEO “has been, since December 20, 2019, the founder, shareholder and administrator of the company O&W Partners”, a travel and aviation consultancy based in London, United Kingdom, and only now has the company become aware of this information that Oumières-Widener “had withheld”.
In addition, the document also points out that the former CEO has held the position of director at ZeroAvia, a company that is developing a hydrogen propulsion system for aviation, from February 2021 until now, and also as a non-executive director at the MetOffice, a UK government institute, between February 2021 and May 2023.
In the latter case, Christine Ourmières-Widener had an annual salary of 15,000 euros.
“The exercise of any of the positions mentioned above manifestly violates the exclusivity regime that applied to the Plaintiff [Christine OUrmières-Widener] as CEO of the Defendants, and does not fit in the least into any of the exceptions allowed by law,” says TAP’s defense.
The airline’s lawyers even claim that, “regardless of the reasons that led to the dismissal of the Plaintiff, she should always have been dismissed, with just cause, for violating the exclusivity regime applicable to public managers with executive functions”.
In the lawsuit filed in September, the former CEO demands compensation of 5.9 million euros, but TAP’s defense points out that even if Christine Ourmières-Widener had been dismissed without just cause, she could only receive a maximum of 432,000 euros in compensation, since the Public Manager’s Statute, to which she was subject, only allows compensation corresponding to the basic salary she would have earned until the end of her term, with a limit of 12 months.
According to the document, the former CEO had an annual base salary of 504,000 euros.
Christine Ourmières-Widener was dismissed for just cause in April 2023, following the controversial compensation of half a million euros to former administrator Alexandra Reis, which led to the resignation of the then Minister of Infrastructure, Pedro Nuno Santos, and his Secretary of State Hugo Mendes, and to the setting up of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the management of the airline.
