“Don't you have a family? Me too”, said Valter Filipe during a telephone conversation with the employee, now registered in the accusation file in the process involving the former governor of the BNA in what is already known as the '500 Million Case'. Ana Maria Marcolino, who had worked at the central bank for 34 years, said she felt under pressure in inappropriate terms. “I realized that I was being pressured. I was sad”, she reinforced.
The deputy director of the Banking Operations Division was confronted by the top BNA official who called her to request proof of the transfer of 500 million dollars from a central bank account at Standard Chattered to that of Perfectbit at HSBC bank from London. However, the account employee that the transaction was not in the system. “It wasn't, there was no record. I filtered several times. I called the Control Area to find out something and this area made a direct filter on the 'swift' system (communication system for the settlement of operations) and found that the operation did not go through a normal process”, he said, quoted by the newspaper of Angola. Ana Maria Marcolino added that she deduced that "the beneficiary was not trustworthy, that is why the operation went wrong".
The employee explained that the entity - Mais Finance, represented by Jorge Gaudens Pontes - had no registration created at the BNA. However, and because it is an “extremely urgent operation”, payment would be made “via a direct operation”, he said.
Heard at the Thursday session of the '500 Million Case' trial, Ana Maria Marcolino also stated that if HSBC, which detected the fraud and alerted national authorities - had not not resorted to international compliance, the operation would have proceeded with normality. The declarant stated that she thought the transfer would be a “resource profitability operation” and, taking into account the urgency, she proceeded with the process, thinking it was a profitability.
The trial continues in the sentence of evidence, with nine more deponents being heard in the next few days. This is followed by the testimony of António Domingos Tiago Dias, at the time of the BNA's deputy governor facts.
The ‘500 Million Case’ is based on an illegal transfer of this same amount from the BNA to the account of a company in London (Perfectbit). This transfer would be a guarantee, paid to a company created by the defendants, in order to start a financing operation for Angola in the amount of US $ 30 billion. The plan was based on the constitution of a strategic investment fund to finance structural projects in the country.
