Africa-Press – Angola. The Attorney General of the Republic, Hélder Pitta Grós, admitted, this Wednesday, in Luanda, flaws in the trial process of the “$500 million case”, due to non-compliance with constitutional principles.
The Constitutional Court (TC) considered unconstitutional the ruling of the Supreme Court (TS) that condemned the former president of the Sovereign Fund of Angola (FSDEA), José Filomeno dos Santos “Zenu”, and the former governor of the National Bank of Angola (BNA ), Valter Filipe, “for violation of the principles of legality, contradictory and fair trial”.
Based on the allegations raised in the extraordinary appeal of unconstitutionality, filed by the defendants, the TC plenary considered the decision unconstitutional and ordered that the process be returned to the appropriate court, “so that the unconstitutionalities found can be expunged”.
Speaking to the press, on the sidelines of the opening of the Conference on Strengthening the Partnership between Angola and the United Nations Organization on Drugs and Crime (ONUDC), the magistrate highlighted, however, that this action by the TC “does not discourage” investigations or combating corruption and asset recovery.
On the contrary, he stressed, the Constitutional Court’s decision “strengthens the way in which the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) operates.”
He made it known that, after the decision, the case will now be referred to the Supreme Court, the body that made the judgment, to decide the subsequent steps.
The appellants were convicted, in 2022, with fixed sentences of five to eight years in prison, for committing the crimes of embezzlement, money laundering, fraud through fraud and influence peddling, in a process that began in 2019.
Along with Valter Filipe and José Filomeno dos Santos, Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião and António Samalia Bule Manuel were also tried, all of them equally sentenced to pay a fine and compensation to the State in the amount of five million kwanzas as moral damages and eight million, five hundred and twelve thousand and five hundred dollars for lost profits and consequential damages.
The defendants are accused in connection with the well-known case of 500 million dollars illegally transferred from the BNA abroad in September 2017.
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