The ruling of the plenary session of the Supreme Court (TS), in which two judges voted unsuccessful, was published this Tuesday on the higher court's website, around two months after the Constitutional Court declared the unconstitutionality of the ruling that condemned, among others, José Filomeno dos Santos "Zenu", for violating the principles of legality and contradiction, fair and compliant trial and the right to defense.
The TC's position was the response to an extraordinary appeal of unconstitutionality sent to the body by Valter Filipe da Silva, Jorge Guadens Pontes Sebastião, José Filomeno dos Santos "Zenu" and António Samalia Bule Manuel, convicted by the Supreme Court, in 2020, for the practice of crimes of embezzlement, fraud by defraud and influence peddling, with penalties set between five and eight years in prison.
The TC understood, in particular, that the TS should issue a new decision in which the testimony of the former president of the Republic was considered, although only four of the eight judges who intervened in the partially revoked decision had maintained their functions, so that the decision of the appeal was considered by the plenary in its current composition.
In the conforming ruling released this Tuesday, the TS reanalyzes the evidence, allegations of the defendants and the Public Ministry, as well as the letter with the testimony of José Eduardo dos Santos, concluding that the fact that the former President authorized the transfer of 500 million dollars "does not exclude liability in practice, as it does not mean that the chief executive had full or partial knowledge of the defendants' intentions".
The TS thus decided to maintain the conviction that had been annulled by the TC.
Filomeno dos Santos "Zenu", at the time of the events president of the Sovereign Fund of Angola, the former governor of the National Bank of Angola (BNA), Valter Filipe, the former senior BNA employee, Samalia Bule, and businessman Jorge Gaudens, were tried and convicted by the Supreme Court on August 14, 2020.
The four defendants were sentenced to prison terms of between five and eight years, for crimes of fraud, embezzlement and influence peddling, for their involvement in an illicit transfer of 500 million dollars to a bank account in London.
