According to the ruling issued by the 4th section of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Angola, dated December 20, to which Lusa had access this Monday, the former head of secret services Manuel Helder Vieira Dias "Kopelipa" is accused of crimes of embezzlement, fraud by defrauding, document forgery, criminal association, influence peddling, abuse of power and money laundering, for a total of seven crimes.
The former head of communications services Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento "Dino", as well as the lawyer Fernando Gomes dos Santos and You Hai Ming, from China Internacional Fund, will answer for the crimes of fraud by defrauding, document forgery, criminal association, influence trafficking and money laundering.
The case also involves the companies China International Fund Angola, Plansmart International Limited and Utter Right International Limited, which were accused of influence peddling, money laundering, fraud by defrauding and document forgery, but will only be responsible for the first two crimes, since, at the material time, Angolan law did not provide for the criminalization of the last two legal types.
The companies were allegedly used by the defendants to set up a scheme that harmed the Angolan State in millions of dollars, involving a financing agreement between Angola and China to support national reconstruction, after the civil war that ended in 2002.
In 2020, the two former strongmen of José Eduardo dos Santos, former President, who died in 2022, had to hand over to the State several companies and buildings owned by their companies China International Fund Angola - CIF and Cochan, S.A., including cement factories and beer, a supermarket chain and residential buildings.
The former vice-president and former leader of Sonangol, Manuel Vicente, is not among the defendants, whose name is also absent from the list of more than 30 witnesses, despite being mentioned in the process, as part of his connections to the CIF.
The court rejected the declaration of nullity of the notification of the indictment requested by general "Dino's" lawyers, who wanted the 1929 Code of Criminal Procedure to be applied to the case, as "manifest inadmissibility, in honor of the principles of procedural speed, procedural economy and maximum legal use of acts already carried out".
In the context of a contradictory instruction, requested by "Kopelipa", Fernando Gomes dos Santos, Plansmart International Limited and Utter Right International Limited, the court considered that the defendants "did not bring relevant elements to refute the accusation" and considered that sufficient evidence had been collected to pronounce (bring to trial) all defendants in the case.
