Luanda – An Angolan businessman with ties to the nation’s former political elite went on trial Friday in Luanda over a $900-million embezzlement scandal, an AFP reporter said.
The sheer scale of the allegations against Carlos Manuel de Sao Vicente has shocked even jaded Angolans long accustomed to seeing oil wealth funnelled out of their impoverished country.
He is accused of fraudulently obtaining shares of the AAA Seguros insurance company, and of illegally benefiting from insurance schemes in the oil industry, state news agency Angop said.
The Luanda District Court blocked recording devices from the hearing, leaving journalists waiting outside.
Augusto Santana, country director for the Democracy Works think tank, said De Sao Vicente was “accused by the attorney general of embezzlement, undue receipt of advantages, corruption, influence trafficking and money laundering”.
De Sao Vicente, who maintains his innocence, has been detained since September 2020 at the notorious Viana prison in Luanda.
ALSO READ | Angolan president vows to battle graft ahead of elections
He is married to Irene Neto, a former deputy minister and daughter of Angola’s first president Agostinho Neto.
The case has also sparked legal action in Switzerland, where De Sao Vicente is accused of parking the $900 million at the Geneva-based Banque SYZ.
Swiss prosecutors in 2018 froze that sum in his accounts on suspicion of money laundering, in one of the largest personal asset freezes in Swiss history. A Swiss court last year reversed part of that freeze, citing insufficient evidence.
In total more than $1 billion linked to the Angolan businessman and his business group have come under investigation in Switzerland, beyond any other assets in Angola.
At home, Angolan authorities seized buildings and hotels owned by his AAA Seguros insurance company.
During the years of Angola’s oil boom, his AAA group sold insurance to the state oil company Sonangol.
ALSO READ | Angola claims $11 billion recovered from graft cases
After taking office in 2017, President Joao Lourenco launched an anti-corruption drive to recoup assets he suspected were embezzled under his predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
State oil company Sonangol was the primary vehicle for siphoning money out of the country.
The company’s former boss, Dos Santos’s daughter Isabel dos Santos, was once ranked by Forbes as Africa’s richest woman, worth $3.5 billion.
But Laurenco fired her just two months into his tenure, then froze her assets in Angola as prosecutors investigated her with embezzlement and money laundering.
The United States in December slapped a travel ban on her and her family. She reportedly lives mostly on her private island in Dubai or at her London home.
About 56 percent of Angola’s nearly 31 million people live on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank says.
Justice Minister Francisco Queiroz said Thursday that Angola has recovered assets worth more than $11 billion during its anti-corruption drive.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pexels
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