Horácio Roque

Horácio da Silva Roque (12 April 1944 – 19 May 2010) was a Portuguese financier and businessman, who founded the Banco Internacional do Funchal (BANIF) in 1988.

Horácio Roque was born in Oleiros, Oleiros, on the 12th of April, 1944. At the age of 14 he left on a ship to Angola, where his older sister already lived. Roque started his first business, a bar in Portuguese Angola, then a colonial possession of Portugal, when he was just 17 years old. Horacio Roque was 18 years old. Remaining as a partner in the brewery, the teen hired a teacher to take private lessons in order to continue his studies, and his name was Viriato.

He was awarded the rank of Commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique on March 18, 1989. The King of Spain, D. Juan Carlos I, distinguished him with the degree of Commander of the Order of Isabel the Catholic.

He was Honorary Consul of Panama in Portugal, whose President of the Republic awarded him, in 1998, the National Decoration of the Order of Vasco Núñez de Balboa.

Family He married twice, the first with Maria de Fátima Henriques da Silva de Moura, whom he divorced in 2000, marrying the second time with, Paula Caetano.

After his death, and despite the divorce, his ex-wife tried to inherit half of his fortune, to the detriment of the couple's two daughters, Maria Teresa Henriques da Silva de Moura Roque (1971), President of the Superior Advisory Board of Banif, wife of also businessman Pietro Saviotti dal Fabbro, from whom Lorenzo Roque dal Fabbro (2004) and Bianca Roque dal Fabbro (2006) were born, and Cristina Henriques da Silva de Moura Roque (1978), anthropologist.

His stepmother Paula Caetano also tried to inherit part of the fortune, which was also denied by her stepdaughters.

Death Horácio Roque died of a stroke on 19 May 2010, at the Hospital of São José, at São José, in Lisbon, Portugal. He was 66 years old.