João Lourenço dismisses governor of Cuando Cubango

In another presidential decree, the chief executive appoints Guilherme Pereira as deputy governor of Cabinda province for Technical Services and Infrastructure.

The press release justifies the resignation with the "convenience of public service".

In September, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) opened an inquiry to investigate the authenticity of a debt of 439.5 billion kwanzas claimed by the company Angoskima to the government of Cuando Cubango.

According to the press, the debt is claimed by the company Angoskima Lda for the supply of various goods to the government of the province of Cuando Cubango between 1992 and 1997, a debt that will have been validated by the local government.

The press questioned the authenticity of the debt, attributing to the current governor of Cuando Cubango, Julio Bessa, alleged embezzlement of these funds in collusion with the company, which, according to the newspaper Valor Económico, was "created only on July 3, 1997".

According to a certificate consulted by Lusa, the company had José Maria Zeferino and his 10-year-old son, Angélico José Vandra Quiel, as partners, at the date of its incorporation.

The government of Cuando Cubango justified, at the time, in a statement, that under the guidance of the Ministry of Finance, on June 21, 2021, the managing partner of the company Angoskimas Lda approached the secretary general of that government requesting the issuance of a updated statement of debt.

The statement said that, according to the company's official, the debt, "which had already been validated in the past by the Ministry of Finance", was valued at 2.9 trillion kwanzas, but "after a serious calculation error was detected. , which inflated the amount", it was reduced to 439.5 billion kwanzas and validated by Júlio Bessa.

"With this accounting rigor, the Provincial Government of Cuando Cubango saved the State's coffers, that is, from the treasury, the undue payment of 2.5 trillion kwanzas", the note reads.

For the Cuando Cubango government, "it is, at the very least, strange and pathetic the conversion of this act of patriotism and good management of public affairs into a scandal and crime of embezzlement/theft, which is pretentiously being attributed to Governor Júlio Bessa, without well-founded reason and causal link with the facts" reported.

The accusations were considered by the Cuando Cubango government as "an ignoble and despicable act, forged in the laboratory by everyone known to be the axis of evil in that province".

The Ministry of Finance clarified, in a note, that "it did not grant the debt claim of the company Angoskima Lda, as it was outside the 2013 and 2017 temporal scope, defined by executive decree 507/18 of 20 November , which guided the strategy of regularization of overdue domestic debt".

According to the defined methodology, explains the ministerial body, the complaint was registered, after receiving the certification and approval made by the Provincial Government of Cuando Cubango, as the beneficiary body of the services, "and not by the finance minister, as she does not intervene in the process. of debt certification".

The Ministry of Finance also assured that the process would be referred to the General Inspectorate of State Administration (IGAE), "taking into account the identified non-conformities".