The request to hear José Eduardo dos Santos, on whether the referred operation was oriented, was made at the beginning of the trial, on 9 December 2019, for the defense of defendant Valter Filipe, former governor of the National Bank of Angola, who is being tried together with the son of José Eduardo dos Santos, José Filomeno “Zenu” dos Santos, Jorge Gaudens Sebastião and António Samalia Bule.
In response this Wednesday to the aforementioned request, the court said it had endeavored to obtain the answers, as requested by the defense, but without obtaining any response "not even the manifestation of not making statements".
In this sense, “taking into account the defense's interest and without wanting to impose this right, the court considers that it should take steps to obtain this form of evidence”.
The court suspended the session, which will resume on Tuesday next week.
The case involves an alleged improper transfer of 500 million dollars to a bank outside the country, in which the former governor of the BNA, Valter Filipe, the former president of the Sovereign Fund of Angola, José Filomeno “Zenu”, is accused. dos Santos, Angolan businessman Jorge Gaudens Sebastião, and then director of the BNA's Reserve Management Department, António Bule Manuel.
The defendants are accused of several crimes including fraud for defrauding, money laundering and influence peddling (“Zenu” dos Santos and Jorge Gaudens Sebastião) and fraud for defrauding, money laundering and embezzlement (António Bule Manuel and Valter Filipe).
