Angola’s Former President May Testify in Son’s Graft Trial
Angola’s Former President May Testify in Son’s Graft Trial
Former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos will probably be asked to testify in court after his son and three others who are accused of embezzlement and money laundering said they were just following his orders.
The trial that began Monday in the capital, Luanda, is expected to shed light on the inner dealings of Dos Santos’s almost four-decade rule. The two most high-profile defendants are his 41-year-old son Jose Filomeno and former central bank Governor Valter Filipe da Silva, who were arrested after illegally transferring $500 million to a bank account in the U.K. weeks before Dos Santos stepped down.
The crimes are “nonexistent” because the accused acted on the orders of the executive, lawyers for the four defendants said in a statement to the court, according to Angola’s state-owned news agency Angop. Jose Filomeno appeared in court both Monday and Tuesday but wasn’t required to speak. Da Silva, who received medical assistance in court on Monday after feeling unwell, was absent Tuesday.
The court accepted the request by the defendants for the former president to be questioned, Angop said.
Legal Fees
The money transfer served as an advance payment to a company created by the defendants to set up a financing operation of more than $30 billion through a so-called strategic investment fund, according to the Angolan news site Novo Jornal.
British authorities returned the money to Angola after the transfer was detected. The government spent more than $10 million in legal fees to recover the funds, Novo Jornal reported, citing an official from the public prosecutor’s office.
Jose Filomeno headed Angola’s $5 billion sovereign wealth fund from 2013 until January last year, when he was dismissed by his father’s successor, President Joao Lourenco. He is among several prominent figures who’ve lost influential positions since Lourenco took the helm of Africa’s second-biggest oil producer two years ago.
Lourenco, who has made battling graft a cornerstone of his government, has rejected allegations he is conducting a witch hunt against the family of his predecessor and its allies. Angola is ranked one of the world’s most corrupt nations by Transparency International.
To contact the reporters on this story: Henrique Almeida in Lisbon at halmeida5@bloomberg.net;Candido Mendes in Luanda at cmendes6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joao Lima at jlima1@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax, Karl Maier
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