According to a press release from the Supreme Court, this will be the fifth trial session in which Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior ("Kopelipa"), Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, Fernando Gomes dos Santos, Yiu Haiming, and the companies China International Found (CIF), Plansmart International Limited and Utter Right International Limited are defendants.
This session is expected to see the court respond to the preliminary questions presented by the defendants' defense.
"Dino" and "Kopelipa", former strongmen of ex-president José Eduardo dos Santos, and the other co-defendants are accused of setting up a scheme involving a financing agreement between Angola and China to support national reconstruction, after the civil war.
This scheme included the China International Fund (CIF) and its subsidiaries and Sonangol, whose former president, Manuel Vicente, is named several times in the indictment.
The co-defendants are accused of the crimes of embezzlement, fraud through fraud, document forgery, criminal association, abuse of authority, money laundering and influence peddling.
In the last session, the lawyer for the other two companies targeted in the case, Benja Satula, regretted the delays that have been occurring since the beginning of the trial, despite recognizing that they are "founded", since CIF Angola has never been present since the beginning of the trial.
Benja Satula stressed that the presence of the accused is mandatory under penalty of nullity of the proceedings, considering the issue of CIF Angola to be legally complex.
The lawyer stated that one of the partner companies of CIF Angola, which holds 60 percent of the shares, handed over its share to the State, in addition to 100 percent of the assets of the CIF Angola universe, so that "technically" the State is a partner of CIF Angola, despite the fact that no "act of legal-administrative conformation of this handover of the shares" was carried out.
