On Thursday, March 24, the District Court of Luanda sentenced Carlos São Vicente to nine years in prison for embezzlement, tax fraud and money laundering.
The Portuguese-Angolan businessman, married to Irene Neto (daughter of the first president of Angola) also lost all his assets to the state and will have to pay compensation in the amount of 500 million US dollars.
According to the Angolan justice, Carlos São Vicente has injured the state oil company Sonangol with more than 900 million US dollars.
The defense must appeal the ruling, although it has not yet officially announced this decision.
The businessman and former president of AAA was arrested on September 22, 2020 by the Angolan authorities and has since been held in pretrial detention. The trial that culminated in this conviction began on January 26 of this year.
To justify this sentence, the court accepted the accusation that the businessman, who had monopolized insurance and reinsurance for the Angolan state oil company Sonangol for nearly two decades, had set up a three-way scheme, with companies in Angola, London and Bermuda. , which caused losses to the Angolan treasury, in financial terms, in the amount of more than one billion euros.
The businessman’s defense argued that the accusation was “almost non-existent”, as there are no facts to prove tax fraud.
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