In an interview with Lusa, Irene Neto, daughter of Agostinho Neto and wife of the Portuguese-Angolan Carlos São Vicente, explained that "all positions taken by judicial bodies, in particular, in this context [the current one], all have a political substrate", considering that the "decision making" of the court to apply the preventive detention measure to the husband was "hasty".
"Within a framework of fight against corruption, of a very delicate situation of unemployment, of economic problems, derived from the low price of oil, which is our biggest export product, in the face of a whole youth political contest with demonstrations, there are a whole set of elements that will have precipitated this taking of position ", of the Attorney General of the Republic of Angola, affirmed, not wanting to speak, however, about the differences of political action of the current President, João Lourenço, and of his predecessor in office, José Eduardo dos Santos.
For Irene Neto, "there is not much positive outlook for the short term" for her country.
In her opinion, these are situations "always difficult to combine with the immediate desire for immediate results for the population, especially young people struggling with a lot of misery, unemployment and lack of hope, of prospects".
In addition, "next year will be a presidential legislative election," she said.
As for the husband's case, she recalled that "the final charge does not yet exist" and that the defendant provided all the requested documentation.
For Irene Neto, what happened to her husband was the result of media pressure on the Attorney General of the Republic of Angola.
She also said that the work that the husband did had "benefits that were notorious and it is a pity that this whole project, that work is being destroyed, because it is arrested and apprehended as it is [the goods], there is no maintenance" of the companies.
If the whole process had not happened, the AAA Group, owned by Carlos São Vicente, today had, in Angola alone, a heritage that his wife estimated at US $ 1 billion and employed around 700 workers in its two most important areas of activity , insurance and hospitality.
Asked about her husband's connections to Manuel Vicente, the strong man of the oil company and then vice president of Angola at the time, Irene Neto just said: "Engineer Manuel Vicente was the President of Sonangol and my husband worked at Sonangol ".
But he underlined that "at that time, more than Manuel Vicente, there were other structures above Manuel Vicente" and added that "like everything, and everything else that was done in Angola, decisions were made, groups were created, actions were distributed and participation by orientation of the highest executive power holder ", he stressed.
