Africa-Press – Angola. Angola’s Minister of State for Economic Coordination said that he is “absolutely calm” regarding the complaint made by Angolan activist Rafael Marques, about alleged overbilling in the construction of the Currency Museum.
José de Lima Massano was questioned about this complaint during his participation in the 2nd edition of “Conversas Economia 100 Makas”, an initiative by journalist, economic analyst and university professor Carlos Rosado de Carvalho.
At issue is a request for a criminal investigation submitted to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), in January of this year, by activist and journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, against José de Lima Massano, on suspicion of committing crimes of embezzlement, influence peddling, money laundering and tax fraud.
The Angolan leader said that the issue is not new, as the first complaint was made in 2019, having sent the information gathered on the subject to the PGR, “demonstrating that what was being said made no sense at all”.
” In 2019, I took the initiative to make this note, to send a dossier to the Attorney General’s Office, giving explanations that I had on the subject. More recently, the same conversation was repeated and the citizen [José de Lima Massano] had the same procedure”, he said.
José de Lima Massano said that he is “absolutely calm and respects, to the limit, what his responsibilities are and the trust he has in the management of public assets”.
He added that his time at the National Bank of Angola (BNA) was one of “correctness at all levels and always very careful management”.
” I am very proud of the work done at the National Bank of Angola, our accounts were always presented up to date during the period I was there. I had a two-year break, [and] when I returned to the National Bank of Angola, I had to recover those accounts again, get the accounting up to date again, have the accounts audited, get the audit board up and running so that we have oversight instruments “, he stressed.
Regarding the Currency Museum, José de Lima Massano said that it is a work that fills him with pride, stressing that it is a building of great complexity from an engineering point of view, as it is “buried”, but that it serves the purpose pursued by the Angolan central bank.
In the complaint filed with the PGR, to which Lusa had access at the time, it is alleged that the Currency Museum was overcharged, “a simple structure with an underground floor”, which cost 64.5 million dollars (61.4 million euros), six times the initial value.
“That’s water, so we took a box and buried it down there,” explained the minister, who, when asked whether there was an option to build the building in another location, responded that the objective was “to have the museum close to the National Bank of Angola”, admitting that, at the time, other options were presented.
The complaint filed by the activist and director of the Maka Angola research portal states that, in just two years, the cost of the museum went from just over 10 million dollars (9.5 million euros) to 64.5 million dollars.
José de Lima Massano denied that there had been “cost overruns”, explaining that initially a basic design of the project was made and “some believe that this was what would cost the museum”.
“What we have in this basic design, the associated cost, was barely enough to dig the hole to bury the museum and what we had with the museum was not a slippage, we had several phases, we built the museum with several contracts, the first to study the foundations, make the foundations (…), then it was necessary to make a contract for the foundations themselves (…), then we had the contract to make the box”, he added.
The minister reiterated that he is “absolutely calm regarding this matter and any other that involves the management of citizens in public functions”.
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