The Angolan Attorney General’s Office (PGR) announced today that it is collecting data to investigate complaints about the current director of the Angolan President’s office, Edeltrudes Costa, who will have benefited from contracts with the Angolan State.
“We are also seeing what is going on so that we can properly clarify what happened, because public denunciation is often not enough, it is necessary that this denunciation be accompanied by some more data that will allow us to work with a certain certainty, when so we don’t have to go after it so that we can see whether or not there is an illegal practice ”, said the Angolan PGR today, Hélder Pitta Gróz, questioned by Lusa.
The case involving the head of the cabinet of the President of Angola, João Lourenço, was reported last September by the television station TVI and involves the hiring of a consulting company by Edeltrudes Costa in a deal that aimed to modernize Angolan airports. and will have yielded several million euros in public contracts, authorized by the Angolan head of state.
Last October, several activists in Angola took to the streets to “demand” the resignation of Edeltrudes Costa displaying posters with the words “Edeltrudes Fora”.
Today, in statements to journalists at the end of the presentation of his message on the occasion of the festive season 2020, Hélder Pitta Gróz denied any lethargy in the investigations on the subject, saying that “we cannot answer everything at the same time”.
“People say many things, we cannot be working according to what people say, we have to work according to our abilities, according to the technical and human resources that we have and, therefore, we cannot respond to the all at the same time, ”he replied to Lusa.
The Attorney General of the Republic of Angola also denied the existence of selective processes in the body he supervises, noting that “there has already been a diversity of processes that have been investigated and are in court”.
What exist are processes “more easily instructed than others and, therefore, those that are more complex take more time than those that are less complex”, he argued.
According to that Angolan Public Prosecutor (MP), the process involving generals Hélder Vieira Dias “Kopelipa” and Leopoldino do Nascimento “Dino”, whose hearings at the PGR began last October, “is still in the preparatory instruction phase”.
The two generals, former senior officials of the Angolan presidency in the era of José Eduardo dos Santos, were constituted defendants in the context of a process related to contracts between the Angolan state and the company China International Foud (CIF).
He also announced that the process involving the current deputy of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA, in power), Aldina da Lomba, is already nearing completion, for her management as former governor of the Angolan province of Cabinda.
Asked about the progress of the process of General Higino Carneiro, current MPLA deputy, about alleged “harmful management of public goods” as governor of the province of Luanda, the PGR assured that he “has been in court for a long time”.
“And we wait for the court to rule on the date of the trial,” he noted.
In relation to the temples of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD) in Angola, recently vandalized, Hélder Pitta Gróz, acknowledged that this is a “somewhat more complex” process, mentioning, however, that work is in progress.
“It is a specific case, but we are working on these processes and we will see if we can reach the end as soon as possible”, he concluded.
