Manuel Vicente met with the President, João Lourenço, and handed over documents involving José Eduardo dos Santos in Sonangol’s corruption business.
After a long silence, the former vice-president of Angola, Manuel Vicente, was in the presidential palace to denounce, in front of João Lourenço, the participation of José Eduardo dos Santos in some of the biggest businesses that, inside and outside the country, involve Sonangol.
It is still too early to conclude what may change from that audience in the fight against corruption in Angola, but, according to Expresso, there is no longer any doubt for the Luanda authorities that the former President was the great architect of all the business engineering of the oil company.
Sonangol’s former boss will have accompanied elements that prove orders expressly given by José Eduardo dos Santos that gave rise to some of the biggest corruption scandals that are handed over to the courts both in Angola and abroad. Thus, some of the suspicions that fell on Manuel Vicente and on General Hélder Vieira Dias (Kopelipa), former head of the Military House, will have been dispelled.
In addition to Manuel Vicente, the help of other former senior officials of the Angolan oil company who in the past worked directly with the then President has also been instrumental in putting all the pieces of the puzzle together.
During the hearing, Manuel Vicente is said to have named José Eduardo dos Santos as the originator of the operation that gave rise to the construction, with funds from the Angolan oil company, of the three buildings that, in the possession of some Sonangol figures, were recently nationalized by the State. “When he was at Sonangol, this operation symbolized one of the many doors that Isabel dos Santos wanted to open, without knowing that she could find her father inside,” confided a former company administrator.
“Nobody did anything without his authorization and nobody was opposed to his decisions”, recalls a former government official heard by Expresso. Based on this principle, after having given a technical explanation of the process of payments abroad via oil shipments, Manuel Vicente will also have placed in José Eduardo dos Santos the responsibility for the multimillion-dollar business that involved the Angolan oil company and CIF, of Chinese-British businessman Sam Pa.
Vicente also spoke of the case of the AAA insurance company, currently in liquidation, and of another operation under the seal of Eduardo dos Santos: the purchase by the China-Sonangol consortium – 30% owned by the Angolan side – of a fleet of AirBus and executive jets that, while flying without the control of the Luanda authorities, have also raised suspicions of embezzlement of Angolan funds.
It remains to be seen now how the judicial investigation services will assess the degree of involvement of Manuel Vicente in the execution of the financial operations attributed to the former Angolan President and which, abroad, gave rise to the creation of assets estimated at more than US $ 4 billion.
As new connections are discovered and their involvement becomes more compromising, the ex-President of Angola has taken some measures. After having revealed an apparent indifference to the arrest of his son, Filomeno dos Santos, the first signal was given when, from Barcelona – where he has received medical treatment for over a year -, he sent an emissary to Luanda with a special cell phone to mediate the contact with João Lourenço. “The objective was to persuade the President to let General Dino, his former lieutenant, travel to Spain, but in doing so he failed to demonstrate that he continues to live with the security ghosts of the past,” explained a former Presidency official. Angolan.
Now, with the siege tightening, he made it known that he will speak directly with the Attorney General. The truth is that, in doing so, it will be after Manuel Vicente, fearing leaks of information by the PGR, to have sent João Lourenço directly “a very sensitive letter and State documents that, involving the name of Eduardo dos Santos, may have helped to undo gray areas of some of the cases in which his name is considered to be a key element “, explained a source from the Angolan intelligence services.
Expresso tried unsuccessfully to get a reaction from José Eduardo dos Santos. Manuel Vicente revealed “having had a very profitable audience” with the president and a source from João Lourenço’s office just confirmed the meeting without going into any details, however.
After delivering the documents to the presidential palace, the former Vice President of Angola, Manuel Domingos Vicente went to Dubai to meet with José Eduardo dos Santos.
