Angola Prosecutor Seeks Seven-Year Jail Term for Ex-Leader’s Son

ANGOLA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Prosecutors are demanding a jail term of at least seven years for Jose Filomeno dos Santos, the son of Angola’s former president, who is accused of taking part in an illegal $500 million transfer before his father stepped down in 2017, state-owned news agency Angop said.

Jose Filomeno, also known as Zenu, is the most high-profile figure linked to the previous regime to stand trial for corruption. The 42-year-old former head of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund spent seven months at a hospital prison in the capital Luanda before being released last year. Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer.

Prosecutors also demanded that Valter Filipe da Silva, a former governor of Angola’s central bank, serve at least 10 years in jail for taking part in $500 million transfer from the central bank to an account in Britain, Angop said. Filipe da Silva’s lawyer has said his client was only following orders from the former president, who was replaced in 2017 by Joao Lourenco.

Since then, Lourenco, a former defense minister, has vowed to crackdown on corruption and recover billions of dollars that he says were transferred abroad during Dos Santos’ rule. While the 77-year-old ex-leader is immune from prosecution until 2022, his daughter Isabel, who is also Africa’s richest woman, faces several civil and criminal cases in Angola. Most of her assets in Angola and in Portugal have been frozen.

Lourenco, whose government is struggling to jump-start an economy that has been hit by lower oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic, has defended his government’s track record in the fight against graft. On Tuesday, he said his government had done more in two years to fight corruption than any other administration since the country’s 1975 independence from Portugal.

“Some people only see these results as good by taking into account the greater or lesser number of people that are charged, detained, or sentenced,” Lourenco in a speech to his ruling MPLA party. Others say the “state should have recovered all of the assets, which is not realistic,” said Lourenco.

Filipe da Silva, Zenu, and two other men are being accused of crimes including participation in unlawful business, money laundering, embezzlement and fraud for the money transfer in 2017. Their trial began at the end of 2019 and the money has been recovered.

Angola is currently ranked 146th out of 180 countries in the Berlin-based advocacy group Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

Source: Bloomberg Business News