José de Lima Massano, who was speaking at the end of the meeting of the economic commission of the Council of Ministers, reacted to the case released on Monday, by the Angolan authorities, of large amounts of money raised in the BNA, by a commercial bank, found in the possession of a military officer from the Security House of the President of the Republic.
According to Massano, the work is being carried out on the basis of the still scarce information available to the National Bank, but possible due to the records, which make it possible to know "which commercial banks do these withdrawals, the day, the time, the person" .
"We have these records and based on these records we are now doing investigative work to understand under what circumstances some of those volumes were delivered to customers of the identified commercial bank," he said.
The governor of the central bank of Angola considered it still premature, at this point, to go into more details.
"There is work that is being carried out, that we would not like to call into question what is happening and with relevant information, that does not call into question the research work, with other bodies that are also carrying out, because we have to to act in a coordinated way, the BNA will be allowed to publish ", he stressed.
In a statement published on its website on Wednesday, the BNA clarified that it receives from commercial banks the notes they receive from the public considered to be higher than their cash needs, makes them available to commercial banks when necessary, to ensure the existence of banknotes in the branch network and automatic teller machines (ATM).
Thus, the BNA puts banknotes in circulation exclusively through commercial banks and all volumes of banknotes, new or used, that leave its strongbox for these banks have the stamps of the National Bank of Angola, which facilitates the registration of movements and confirms the banknotes' provenance.
"The amounts in question, in national currency, were withdrawn in our safe deposit box by a commercial bank, fully obeying the rules and protocols in force for that purpose, with no failure of procedures at the level of the National Bank of Angola", he guaranteed the institution.
The BNA stressed that it opened, however, an investigation "to find out from the commercial bank in question the circumstances in which those values were made available to third parties and what compliance procedures were applied to ensure their legitimacy".
On Monday, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) of Angola released a statement that reported a criminal case "involving officials from the Angolan Armed Forces assigned to the Security House of the President of the Republic [João Lourenço] , on suspicion of committing crimes of embezzlement, currency retention, criminal association and others ".
In the action, "monetary amounts in cash were seized, stored in boxes and suitcases, in the order of millions, in US dollars, euros and kwanzas, as well as homes and vehicles," said the PGR.
