Cabinet Hardens Insider-Trading Penalties, Barring Repeat-Offender Finance Directors From the Sector for Up to 12 Years

Portugal's Conselho de Ministros (Council of Ministers) approved a revision of the Código dos Valores Mobiliários (Securities Code) on 25 June 2026 that sharply raises the penalties for two of the gravest abuses in a financial market: abuso de informação privilegiada (insider trading) and manipulação de mercado (market manipulation). The headline measure lets the authorities bar a repeat-offending company director from holding any role in the financial sector for between 10 and 12 years.

"One of the changes aims to harden the fight against the abuse of privileged information and market manipulation with more demanding sanctions, which include, for example, that repeat-offending administrators can be prohibited from exercising functions in the financial sector for a period of between 10 and 12 years," said Antonio Leitao Amaro, the Ministro da Presidencia (Minister of the Presidency) and government spokesman, after the meeting.

What the Cabinet actually changed

The Securities Code rewrite is one strand of a wider package the government framed as a modernisation of Portugal's capital market. Three changes stand out:

• Tougher market-abuse sanctions. Beyond the long director ban, the reform stiffens the penalty regime that the CMVM (Comissao do Mercado de Valores Mobiliarios, the securities regulator) applies to insider dealing and price manipulation — conduct already policed at EU level under the Market Abuse Regulation.
• A realigned tax-haven list. The government also amended the Lei Geral Tributaria (General Tax Law) so that Portugal "now uses as a reference the European Union's list of tax havens" when it identifies jurisdictions that are not cooperative for tax purposes. Until now Portugal kept its own national blacklist of paraisos fiscais; aligning it with Brussels changes which territories trigger Portugal's punitive tax treatment.
• A push to deepen the capital market. Leitao Amaro flagged "the difficulty of financing companies in the capital market and therefore the excessive dependence on the banking market," a problem he called "particularly relevant for smaller companies, for whom all the bureaucracy and all the paperwork involved in participating in the capital market delays and hinders their entry." The reform is meant to make raising equity simpler, especially for small and medium-sized firms.

The same Council of Ministers separately adjusted the Codigo das Expropriacoes (Expropriations Code), decentralising decisions so that municipalities can themselves declare the utilidade publica (public utility) needed for local projects rather than waiting on central government.

Why a thin market needs sharper teeth

Portugal runs one of Western Europe's smallest equity markets. Euronext Lisbon lists only a few dozen companies, and the country's firms lean overwhelmingly on bank loans rather than bonds or share issues to fund themselves — a structural weakness the Bank of Portugal and the OECD have flagged for years. That makes market integrity doubly important: the fewer the listed names, the more damage a single case of insider dealing or manipulation can do to investor confidence.

The sanctions overhaul is also of a piece with the government's broader deregulation drive, which on the very same day loosened the public-procurement rules and which earlier sought to deepen the retail-investor base through the CMVM's proposed Conta Poupanca-Investimento savings vehicle. The message is consistent: cut friction for honest market participants, raise the cost for dishonest ones. It follows the same logic Lisbon applied when it folded crypto-asset firms into CMVM and Bank of Portugal supervision under MiCA.

What This Means for Expats

• Retail investors: If you hold Portuguese shares on Euronext Lisbon or trade through a local broker, the reform strengthens the legal protections around the prices you pay and receive. A credible threat of a decade-long ban on bad actors is, over time, worth more to small investors than any disclosure form.
• Business owners and founders: The capital-markets simplification is aimed squarely at you. If your Portuguese company has outgrown bank lending, lighter paperwork for issuing equity or debt could open an alternative funding route that barely exists for SMEs today.
• Anyone with offshore holdings: Switching to the EU tax-haven list changes which jurisdictions are treated as non-cooperative. Payments to, or income from, a blacklisted territory can attract aggravated Portuguese tax rates and Stamp Duty. If you have accounts or structures abroad, check whether your jurisdiction sits on the EU list before your next filing.
• Property owners: The Expropriations Code change hands municipalities the power to declare public utility for their own works. If you own a home or land that could fall in the path of a local infrastructure project, the body deciding the compensation and the timetable may now be your camara municipal rather than Lisbon.

The diplomas must still be published in the Diario da Republica (the official gazette) before they bite, and the capital-markets package is likely to draw scrutiny from lawyers who warn that simplification must not dilute investor disclosure. But the direction is set: Portugal wants a deeper market policed by heavier penalties, and the next test will be how aggressively the CMVM uses its new power to put repeat offenders out of the industry for a decade.