Helder Pitta Grós was speaking at a press conference after a plenary meeting of the Superior Council of the Judiciary of the Public Ministry and said that the bank accounts of the son-in-law of Agostinho Neto, first President of Angola, are in Switzerland (more than 1 billion dollars, 940 million euros), Portugal, Singapore, Dubai and Bermuda.
“We have to execute the sentence that was decided by the Angolan courts. At this point, the case no longer has any appeal, it is a res judicata”, highlighted the prosecutor.
The Portuguese-Angolan businessman, married to Irene Neto, is serving a nine-year sentence for embezzlement, tax fraud and money laundering, having also been sentenced to pay compensation of 500 million dollars.
“We have been working with the Swiss authorities to make this money available to the Angolan Government”, said Helder Pitta Grós, indicating that the Angolan authorities have already been, for example, to Singapore, to try to recover 550 million dollars and 42 thousand euros.
In Bermuda there is another 200 million dollars, in Dubai 18 million dollars and in Portugal 20 million euros, in a total of almost 2 billion dollars that should revert to the Angolan State or be made available to the State in the countries where they are located, defended Pitta Grós.
“In the contacts we have had, we have not yet been told: ‘this money cannot be made available to you’. We have been talking, talking and they have said that the money is ours”, continued the person in charge, specifying that clarifications were requested on some issues, namely that the money was obtained through illicit acts.
“Fortunately we have all this and can demonstrate where the money came from and how it got there,” he said, remembering that it was Switzerland itself that informed Angola of the existence of São Vicente's bank accounts.
“It will also not be easy for any bank to suddenly leave billions”, he noted, highlighting that “the legal system of these countries must also be taken into account”, as the courts will also have to authorize the money to be delivered to Angola .
“We are waiting for the processes to progress and we are monitoring this, there may be some difficulty for commercial banks to make so much money available from one moment to the next, [but] the important thing is that we have the decision [so] that the money is made available of our Government”, stated Pitta Grós.
The head of the PGR also said that in the case of Carlos São Vicente, the Constitutional court decided differently from the “500 million” case, which involves a son of former President José Eduardo dos Santos, in which it considered that some constitutional principles had not been observed. , while the questions of unconstitutionality raised by the Portuguese-Angolan businessman's defense were rejected.
He reaffirmed, on the other hand, that Angola was not notified of the opinion of a UN working group on the São Vicente process, which reported illegalities in the detention of the businessman and owner of the extinct insurance company AAA, and therefore cannot "take into account take this issue into account.”
Pitta Grós said that today's meeting served to address issues related to the management and training of magistrates and highlighted the insufficiency of human resources, waiting for "financial availability so that more than 177 new magistrates can take office and begin their duties".
“It is an issue that concerns us”, he assumed, stressing that these new employees will help to “relieve the pressure” on current magistrates.
Pitta Grós also highlighted the authorities' commitment to training, supported by organizations such as the United Nations agency against Corruption and the European Union.
