Angola’s Vice President, Manuel Vicente, has been charged by Portugal’s public prosecutor with fraud, bribery and money laundering.
The allegation that will be unravelled in court is that Manuel Vicente paid bribes of around €750,000 to have a case against him disappear.
The money was paid to Portuguese magistrate, Orlando Figueira, who was arrested a year ago and faces similar charges as a result of the investigation, code named Operation Fizz.
The original case against Vincente was for embezzlement and money laundering when he was head of Angolan State-owned oil company, Sonagol.
This investigation, halted in 2012, had been looking into the source of the money used by Vincente to buy a Lisbon luxury property.
Vicente’s lawyer, Rui Patricio, has described the charges against his client as "entirely fictitious" and that his client was unaware of the charges being brought against him.
“I’m astounded that my client has been accused, not only because he has nothing to do with the facts mentioned but also because he has never even been questioned about them,” said Patricio.
The Angolan government, under the control of lifetime dictator José Eduardo dos Santos, has chipped in with an opinion that Vicente of course is innocent of the charges, with un-named State officials describing the charges as “neo-colonialism” and “revenge by the former colonial master.”
Manuel Vincente headed Sonangol between 1999 and 2011, a position that gave him ample opportunity to enrich himself as well as siphoning off money to the dos Santos family.
Sonangol now is run by the president’s daughter, even though he aims to retire next year.
Between 2007 and 2010 at least $32 billion of oil revenue went missing from the federal ledger, according to the International Monetary Fund, which later tracked most of the money to "quasi-fiscal operations," i.e. it had been misappropriated
Critics of Angola’s government says that much of the country’s oil revenue has gone into the bank accounts of the president, his family and his aides, Vincente being one of them.
