In a conversation with journalists in Luanda, Francisca de Brito underlined the importance of the unit she leads in the fight against money laundering and defended that corruption is a crime against humanity.
"Africa today has billionaires, but the money is not in Africa. How can Portugal be considered a clean system if it has let in dirty money? So it cannot be clean," said Brito, referring to financial systems, reiterating that "the Africa's dirty money is almost all out of Africa."
The head of the UIF spoke in connection with the assessment that Angola will be subject to by the International Financial Action Group (GAFI) and which began this year, a process to which Portugal has also been subject, which received the highest rating in terms of prevention money laundering.
"A well explained system for FATF does not mean, in practice, that nothing bad is going on there," said Francisca de Brito, however, giving as an example the case of the "500 million" that led to the condemnation of the former governor of the Bank. Nacional de Angola (BNA), Walter Filipe, and Filomeno "Zenu" dos Santos, son of former president José Eduardo dos Santos, and which involved a transfer of that amount to a British bank, which ended up blocking the transaction.
"The system used by the governor of the BNA has nothing to do with Angola, the crimes are transnational", she insisted, saying that "there are no clean and dirty ones" since "Africans took money from Africa, but they were facilitated by the banks abroad" and "in Angola's banks there is not an account with a billion".
The head of the UIF lamented the appropriation of public assets, pointing to a case of fraud with school lunches in a provincial government that particularly shocked her, and considered that corruption should be considered "a crime against humanity".
"A crime of murder can involve the death of one person, but corruption kills a lot of people," she criticized.
The FATF mutual evaluation report on Angola is expected to be completed in March 2023, with a visit by the group of experts to the country in June next year.
This is an assessment process relating to the system for preventing and combating money laundering, in which experts will assess the degree of compliance and implementation of the recommendations since 2012, when the previous report was approved and Angola was admitted as a member of the Esaalmg (East and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Group), FATF regional group.
