"This contract is false and was officially brought to the attention of the Angolan Public Prosecutor's Office in a lawsuit against the people of Isabel dos Santos and her husband Sindika Dokolo and against me," writes Mário Leite da Silva, in the denunciation addressed to international regulators, including the Bank of Portugal, to which the Lusa branch had access this Wednesday.
The Portuguese manager, who was chairman of the board of directors of Banco de Fomento Angola when the businesswoman controlled the institution, claims to have been aware of the "false contract" through the analysis of documents he made after being the target of a civil suit brought by the Angolan justice.
At stake is the agreement of Sonangol - then led by Manuel Vicente, who would become vice-president of Angola, under the presidency of José Eduardo dos Santos - with Amorim Energia to enter the capital of Galp. To this end, Sonangol set up the joint venture Esperaza with Exem Energy, owned by Isabel dos Santos, with 60 percent of the oil company and the remaining 40 percent of the company. Later, Esperaza holds 45 percent of Amorim Energia's capital, a holding company with a 33.34 percent position in the Portuguese oil company. Indirectly, the Angolans thus control 15 percent of Galp.
According to the Angolan courts, Esperaza's initial capital of 193 million euros was fully invested by the Angolan oil company, which is claiming the amount owed to the company in court.
Leite da Silva accuses the Angolan Public Ministry of acting "in subrogation" of Sonangol's interests in order to obtain, "how it managed", the seizure of the assets of Isabel dos Santos, the businesswoman's husband, the Congolese Sindika Dokolo, and himself.
The company Esperaza was acquired in 2006 but the contract for entry into the joint venture, which Mário Leite Silva says is false, "is dated November 30, 2005" and will have allowed the withdrawal of 193 million euros from Sonangol.
"The persons who appear to sign the said 'contract' on behalf of Esperaza (Fernando Santos, on the date legally responsible for Sonangol and Francisco Lemos José Maria, on the date, Sonangol's financial administrator who was later appointed chairman of the Board of Directors of this state-owned company) had no employment relationship and/or powers of representation conferred by ABN AMRO Special Corporate Services B.V., at Esperaza on November 30, 2005 or any date prior to January 30, 2006," writes Mário Leite da Silva, referring to the time Sonangol entered the capital of Esperaza.
"Since the fake supply contract includes the signatures of the people who signed on behalf of Esperaza - not including their names at the place of their signatures (Fernando Santos and Francisco Lemos José Maria) we were able to prove that it was these people who signed, comparing the signatures of the alleged supply contract with other documents they signed," the manager adds.
In the same document, the manager stresses that the "contract" in question "integrates the crime of forgery of document and use of false document" and indicates the "illicit withdrawal of Sonangol's public funds" and the practice of crimes of appropriation - embezzlement, abuse of trust or swindling - economic participation in business, "as well as the laundering of the respective values".
"I never knew, directly or indirectly, of the existence of the aforementioned contract (...) I became aware in 2020 of the existence of this document," he writes.
The denunciation also states that the disbursements provided for in the contract in question "which amount to 193,465,406.23 euros" were "fully" made but that "it was not together with the seizure process (...) the evidence of banking movements underlying it".
In the letter sent to the regulators, Leite Silva claims to have led on the side of Amorim Holding II SGPS S.A. the sale of Esperaza to Angolan shareholders in 2006.
The 19-page letter signed by Mário Leite da Silva was sent from Lisbon on September 11 to the Bank of Portugal, Banco Nacional de Angola, De Nederlandsche Bank, European Central Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, Banco Comercial Português, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank and the European Parliament.
The complainant asks the regulators to carry out a "reinforced investigation" and urgently "of the circumstances that give context to the emergence of the referred 'contract', in order to ascertain acts of an illicit nature and who were responsible".
The letter includes more than a dozen documents attached, including the contract between Sonangol and Esperaza that Mário Leite da Silva says is "false".
Lusa tried to get more explanations from the manager, but Mário Leite da Silva preferred not to comment.
