João Manuel Oliveira Rendeiro (22 May 1952 – 13 May 2022) was a Portuguese

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

er, entrepreneur and university teacher. He was the founder of the Banco Privado Português.

Biography

Rendeiro was born in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, the son of João Augusto da Silva Rendeiro and wife Joana Marques Gonçalves Oliveira, shoe store owners in Lisbon. Both of his parents were originally from

Murtosa Murtosa (), officially Murtosa Town (), is a town and a municipality in the District of Aveiro in Portugal. The population in 2011 was 10,585, in an area of 73.09 km2. It had 8,282 eligible voters. The present Mayor is Joaquim Manuel Baptist ...

, in

Aveiro District Aveiro District (, ) is located in the central coastal region of Portugal. The capital of the district is the city of Aveiro, which also serves as the seat of Aveiro Municipality. Aveiro District is bordered by the Porto District to the north, ...

. The family moved to Lisbon and lived in Campo de Ourique, a civil parish (

freguesia (), usually translated as "parish" or "civil parish", is the third-level administrative subdivision of Portugal, as defined by the 1976 Constitution. It is also the designation for local government jurisdictions in the former Portuguese over ...

) of the historic center of Lisbon, and João Rendeiro attended both the reputed Salesianos private catholic school and the state-run Liceu Pedro Nunes high school in the city. He then studied economics at the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão (ISEG) of the

Technical University of Lisbon The Technical University of Lisbon (UTL; , ) was a Portuguese public university. It was created in 1930 in Lisbon, as a confederation of preexisting schools, and comprised the faculties and institutes of veterinary medicine; agricultural scienc ...

, where he was also a teacher, and later went to the

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

in England where he would be awarded a doctorate degree also in economics. While working as a university teacher, in a marketing class, João Rendeiro created together with a pupil a successful mineral sparkling water brand called Frize, founded as a company in 1994 and based in

Vila Flor Vila Flor () is a municipality in Portugal. Locally referred to as the Portuguese ''Capital of Olive Oil'', Vila Flor is located in the Terra Quente Transmontana, in the southern part of the district of Bragança. The population in 2011 was 6,697 ...

District of Bragança A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivision ...

, that they would later sell to Compal. However, Rendeiro became nationally renowned and influent after he has founded the Banco Privado Português (BPP) in 1996, a private bank that grew considerably for several years but would collapse in 2008 and went into

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a Company (law), company is brought to an end. The assets and property of the business are redistributed. When a firm has been liquidated, it is sometimes referred to as :wikt:wind up#Noun, w ...

. His private bank followed to bankruptcy for which on 24 July 2009, Paulo Guichard and Salvador Fezas who served as two

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

members of the BPP were suspended and were both joined by Rendeiro with the appointment to a case that involved indicting for falsifying accounts,

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

and tax crimes. He had claimed that he did not know anything about its issues. On 11 February 2013, the three of them were charged by Public Prosecution Service with indictments of

intention An intention is a mental state in which a person commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ...

deception Deception is the act of convincing of one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Tort of ...

and

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

in the management of an

investment fund An investment fund is a way of investment, investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These ad ...

. In a second case, on 15 October 2018, Rendeiro was sentenced by the Judicial Court of the District of Lisbon for committing computer and falsification document forgery. On 14 May 2021, he was sentenced to ten years by the Lisbon District for breach of trust, money laundering and tax fraud. On 28 September 2021, Rendeiro was sentenced by a Lisbon District court to three years of imprisonment for fraud. In the same day, it was reported that he had fled via London from Portugal and Europe to break free from the execution of his sentences. His wife Maria de Jesus Rendeiro had stayed in Portugal for Rendeiro's escape and the childless couple got an arrest warrant on 3 November 2021. Her wife was subjected to an interrogation by the Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) for which she was placed under

house arrest House arrest (also called home confinement, or nowadays electronic monitoring) is a legal measure where a person is required to remain at their residence under supervision, typically as an alternative to imprisonment. The person is confined b ...

. On 11 December 2021, Rendeiro was arrested in South Africa. On 23 February 2022, his ten-year sentence was upheld by the Lisbon Court of Appeal for which Rendeiro was declared with other issues. As of May 2022, the

extradition In an extradition, one Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction delivers a person Suspect, accused or Conviction, convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforc ...

of Rendeiro to Portugal was planned to be decided in court in June 2022.

Death

He died in May 2022 of

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

from

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

in his serving sentence time inside the Westville Prison, in

Westville, KwaZulu-Natal Westville is an area in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and is just west and 10 km inland from the Durban CBD. It was formerly an independent municipality and became part of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in 2002. The climate is subtropica ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rendeiro, João 1952 births 2022 deaths 2022 suicides Businesspeople from Lisbon Portuguese bankers Portuguese businesspeople Technical University of Lisbon alumni Portuguese emigrants to South Africa Suicides by hanging in South Africa Portuguese fraudsters Portuguese people convicted of money laundering Portuguese prisoners and detainees