According to the leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Adalberto Costa Júnior, the parliamentary group received a letter sent to the National Assembly by Pedro Lussati, a major in the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), convicted as part of "Operation Caranguejo ", in a decision by the Luanda District Court that has not yet become final.
Adalberto Costa Júnior, who called on the press to talk about the current functioning of State institutions, said that Major Pedro Lussati, assigned to the former Security House of the President of the Republic, detained in possession of millions of euros, kwanzas and dollars, " sent a relevant and shocking complaint to the National Assembly against the director general of the State Information and Security Services (Since)".
"The National Assembly must take due account of the complaint from citizen Pedro Lussati due to the seriousness of his accusations, triggering all the mechanisms provided for in its regulations to determine the veracity of the facts pointed out and, if applicable, give rise to a demand to the Public Ministry for the instruction of the competent judicial process", he said.
In this complaint, Pedro Lussati lists several irregularities in the process, namely his alleged kidnapping, false imprisonment, torture, coercion, interrogations, forging evidence and instrumentalization of public prosecutors, judges and prosecutors.
According to the president of UNITA, Pedro Lussati's complaint accuses the highest official of Since of facts that violate the Constitution and other laws in force in the country, undermine the Democratic Rule and the Rule of Law and the normal and regular functioning of State institutions. , which is why, he said, they should have already provoked "an immediate reaction", both from the President of the Republic and from those targeted in the complaint.
"Major Lussati's complaint raises, above all, well-founded and disturbing concerns regarding the functioning of the Intelligence Services in Angola, and it is fundamentally this issue that motivates this public statement", said the leader of the country's second political organization.
The UNITA leader expressed concern that "the Angolan secret services, which should be an important arm of the State for the fight against corruption, could turn out, after all, to be a den where the very phenomenon that claims to intend to fight".
Pedro Lussati, who has been in preventive detention since May 2021, was sentenced in November 2022 to 14 years in prison for the crimes of embezzlement, money laundering and fraud in transporting currency abroad, a sentence that was reduced by two years, but the sentence has not yet become final.
The case involved 49 defendants, including high-ranking military and civilian officials, allegedly involved in the diversion of millions of dollars through a fraudulent scheme to pay inflated salaries and to "ghost" employees in units assigned to the President's Security House.
