In comments to Público newspaper, the secretary of state for finance, Ricardo Mourinho Félix, said that not only did the goverment not know of the Bank of Portugal's initiative but described it as a “grave failure to inform”.

According to Público, the Bank of Portugal's governor, Carlos Costa, suggested to the ECB that it limit Banif's access to liquidity via monetary policy operations in the Eurosystem, at the same time as it was asking the government to find a way to guarantee funding for the bank.

“I hope that the Bank of Portugal has a justification for this proposal, not least because, simultaneously, it was asking me at that time to find a way to cover Banif's liquidity needs, [which were] worsened as a consequence of this decision," the secretary of state said, as cited by Público.

Félix said he did not know the “basis for the decision” by Costa.

On Thursday night, after another newspaper Jornal de Negócios reported on the restrictions imposed on financing to Banif, the Bank of Portugal stressed that the proposal that it had put forward to the ECB on limiting access to the Eurosystem was "less damaging" for Banif that the measure that was actually put into effect.

"The measure proposed by the Bank of Portugal was the least damaging of the framework of discretionary measures at the disposal of the Eurosystem (limitation, suspension or exclusion from access to monetary policy operations of the Eurosystem)", the Bank of Portugal said in a statement.

The Jornal de Negócios had reported that the ECB imposed restrictions at the proposal of the Bank of Portugal. The story was based on its reading of the minutes of a meeting of the ECB board of governors.

In practice, the Bank of Portugal said in its statement, the measure it proposed "had no impact on the amount of liquidity that the institution could obtain in the ambit of monetary policy operations." It stressed: "In reality, the ECD's decision went beyond the proposal made by the Bank de Portugal ... in that it determined the suspension of access to the above-mentioned operations on 21 December of 2015, if by that date the process of sale of the institution was not successfully concluded or if [Banif] was not subject to resolution measures."