TAP Has Until Wednesday 13 May to Defend Against Azul's €189 Million Action in the Tribunal de Lisboa — Brazilian Carrier Argues the 2016 Bond's Security Agreement Was Never Constituted, TAP SGPS Counters With a Suprimento Reclassification

TAP Air Portugal has until Wednesday 13 May 2026 to file its formal defence to the €189 million civil action filed against it by Brazil's Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras in the Tribunal da Comarca de Lisboa. The Brazilian carrier filed the action on 13 March 2026 and is asking the court to convict TAP for breaching a contractual undertaking attached to a 2016 bond subscription — a file that now intersects with the parallel insolvency proceeding over the old holding TAP SGPS, currently in liquidation under the name Siavilo.

The 2016 Bond That Underpins the Whole Action

The dispute traces back to a 2016 bond issue in which Azul subscribed for €90 million of TAP debt. At the time, David Neeleman simultaneously held material stakes in both TAP — through the consortium that won the 2015 privatisation — and in Azul, the Brazilian low-cost carrier he had founded in 2008. The 2016 bond contract carried a contractual obligation on the Portuguese carrier to constitute a Security Agreement — a guarantee package over identified TAP assets — to back the bond. Azul's pleading now reads that the Security Agreement was never constituted, that the bond consequently sat unsecured for nearly a decade, and that TAP is liable for the principal plus a decade of accrued interest — a build that takes the headline claim from the original €90 million to the €189 million now pleaded in Lisbon.

The TAP SGPS Counter — Suprimento, Not Bond

TAP's counter-attack was filed in November 2024 inside the TAP SGPS insolvency docket, where the holding (now Siavilo) is arguing that the entire 2016 transaction should be re-characterised as a suprimento — a Portuguese-law category covering loans made by shareholders or related parties to a company, which under the Código das Sociedades Comerciais rank junior to ordinary creditors and cannot benefit from third-party guarantees of the type Azul is invoking. The argument leans on Neeleman's double shareholding at the time of the 2016 subscription: if the bond was a related-party advance dressed as a bond, then Azul's guarantee claim collapses and the €90 million principal goes to the back of the queue inside an insolvency where ordinary creditors have already voted for liquidation in October 2025.

The Wednesday Deadline and the Sanitation Phase

The Lisbon court has set TAP's response deadline at the end of this week — 13 May 2026 — closing the pleadings phase and opening the fase de saneamento, where the court fixes the contested facts and the procedural calendar. The judge handling the linked TAP SGPS insolvency has already ordered an investigation into the causes of the insolvency, an inquiry that Azul has used as a hook to request a culpable-insolvency classification against the directors of TAP SGPS — a finding that would expose the former directors to personal civil liability for the shortfall to creditors. The Wednesday filing will tell the market how TAP intends to keep the two tracks separate: a substantive defence on the bond facts in the civil claim, and a procedural challenge inside the insolvency to head off the culpable-insolvency request.

Why This Tape Matters Beyond the Numbers

For the Portuguese state, which has been preparing the reprivatisation file on TAP SA throughout 2025-2026, the €189 million civil claim sits inside the perimeter that any future strategic investor will need to underwrite. The Wednesday filing — and the eventual judgement — will set a price on a litigation risk that any IAG, Lufthansa or Air France-KLM bidder is currently watching from the sidelines.