TAP Books the Ex-CEO's €5.9 Million Indemnisation Claim Into the 2025 Accounts as a Civil Contingency — Civil Contingency Bucket Up From €28.5M to €34M, Auditor Disclosure With No Provision Set

TAP's 2025 accounts, signed off this week, take an explicit step on a litigation that has hung over the airline since the December 2023 sacking of Christine Ourmières-Widener. The full €5.9 million indemnisation she is suing for, the company has now told its auditors, is being treated as a contingência cível — a civil contingency, recognised in disclosure but not provisioned in cash. TAP's lawyers, the disclosure adds, judge an unfavourable outcome não provável, so no provision has been booked against the line.

The numbers tell their own story. The civil-contingency aggregate in TAP's accounts has climbed from €28.5 million in the 2024 financials to €34 million in the 2025 set — an increase that the disclosure attributes, alongside customer-irregularity actions, specifically to the Ourmières-Widener case. Recognition without provision is a careful piece of accounting: TAP is telling investors, the State as shareholder and the next privatisation buyer that the claim exists and is being defended, while pre-committing to none of the cash.

How the €5.9 Million Was Built

The figure stitches together several heads of damage. The former chief executive seeks the salary and bonus economics she would have collected if her contract had run its full course through 2025, the contractual values triggered by dismissal without the 180-day prior notice she says she was owed, and a reputational-damage component for the public framing of her departure. Her case, filed in late 2023 and confirmed in February 2026 by the Relação court as a civil-jurisdiction matter, is now moving towards trial without a date scheduled.

The Original Dismissal Grounds

The Government's grounds for the December 2023 dismissal — justa causa — were stated as violação grave por omissão da lei ou dos estatutos da empresa, drawing on an Inspecção-Geral de Finanças audit that concluded the indemnisation paid to remove board member Alexandra Reis had been illegal. Those grounds are precisely what the civil action contests. The former CEO's public position, restated as recently as January 2026 to Renascença, is that she was dismissed sem fundamento and that the political framing of the case was driven by the parliamentary inquiry then under way.

What This Means for Expats

• No operational impact. TAP's flight schedule, ground handling, fares and frequent-flyer programme are unaffected by the litigation or its accounting recognition. The numbers move on the balance sheet, not the timetable.
• Privatisation read. The €5.9 million claim is not a deal-breaker against an enterprise value the State has signalled in the low single-digit billions, but the recognition shifts a known liability from the off-balance-sheet category into the disclosure bucket — the kind of move incoming bidders prefer to see before due diligence rather than during it.
• Ongoing-case framing matters. TAP has stated publicly, including in a February 2026 statement, that it não fez mal nenhum to the former chief executive and will continue to contest the action. Recognition as a contingency does not change that defence; it formalises the existence of the claim for accounting purposes.
• Civil-court track only. The Relação confirmed in February that the action proceeds in civil rather than labour jurisdiction, which is the procedural channel the former CEO had pushed for. No criminal exposure is in play.
• Watch the 2026 accounts. If the case is heard before next year's accounts close, the civil-contingency line will move again, either up if a hostile development is read into the file, or down if the matter resolves. Today's number is the current-state placeholder.