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The processes investigated by the National Asset Recovery Service of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) indicate that the Angolan State has been harmed by US $ 23.8 billion, that is, a figure close to US $ 20, 3 billion. euros, Angolan President João Lourenço said in an interview with a Newsletter from the american newspaper Wall street journal.
“Of these, $ 13.52 billion was illegally taken through fraudulent contracts with [petrolífera estatal] Sonangol; 5.09 billion businesses left [empresas de gestão pública de comercialização e exploração de diamantes, respectivamente] Sodiam and Endiama; and the remaining 5.19 billion from other sectors and public companies, ”said João Lourenço, in the published interview. online, in Newsletter WSJ Pro Emerging and growing markets.
The figures referred to by the Angolan president have not been independently confirmed, says the author of the Newsletter, Dan Keeler, but “they are consistent with the substantial sums seized” in the last year from Isabel dos Santos and Filomeno dos Santos, sons of the previous president, José Eduardo dos Santos, during the last year.
These US $ 24 billion are twice the value of Angola’s net foreign exchange reserves. The recovery of this money is, therefore, a priority for the Government of João Lourenço, which is facing the double crisis of the fall in oil prices, the main source of income, and the new coronavirus pandemic.
At the moment, the vast majority of Angolans disapprove of the economic performance of the Government of João Lourenço. According to the survey by the opinion polling firm Ovilongwa for the Afrobarometer and published at the end of September, 71% of those surveyed have a bad or very bad vision of the executive’s general economic performance.
And covid-19 is reaching peak infection rates almost directly, and the government criticizes that it is not doing enough to combat the disease, that it is reaching even the elite figures. This week, the death of the governor of Uíge, Sérgio Luther Rescova, member of the Multisectoral Commission for the Prevention and Combat of Covid-19, officially “victim of a disease”, but commonly associated with covid-19, was very noisy .
The Angolan president told the Wall street journal that, to date, 4.9 billion dollars (4.15 billion euros) have been recovered. Specifically, 2.71 billion dollars in cash and 2.19 billion dollars in properties, factories, port terminals, radio and television stations, in Angola, Portugal and Brazil.
Orders to seize or freeze assets and money have been issued in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Monaco and the United Kingdom, but the list can still grow, João Lourenço said.
