One of Angola’s most senior police officers is accused of stealing $3.7-million and then paying a hit man to murder a colleague who was due to give evidence against him about the theft.
Commentators in Angola have likened the case to a crime movie and the nation is fiercely divided about whether the accused is guilty or not, amid claims of people being set up and paid off along the way.
In 2009 Joaquim Vieira Ribeiro was Luanda’s police commissioner when details emerged that more than $160-million had been embezzled from the country’s central bank, Banco Nacional de Angola, and the finance ministry.
In the high-profile probe that followed more than 40 people were arrested, among them bank clerks, lawyers, accountants, drivers and security guards, and several homes were raided.
During the search of one property, reportedly owned by alleged embezzlement suspect and central bank staff member Fernando Monteiro, a stash of money amounting to $3.7-million was recovered. According to reports, the money was taken to a nearby police station in Viana, on the outskirts of Luanda, and stored as evidence. But it is alleged that by the next morning the money had gone missing.
Following an internal investigation in early 2010, led by chief superintendent Domingos Francisco João, 55-year-old Ribeiro emerged as the prime suspect.
According to one report in the weekly private newspaper, A Capital, Ribeiro went personally at 3am to the police station to take the money.
Denying all charges against him, Ribeiro first appeared in court in August last year and was due to stand trial at the Provincial Court in Luanda this April. But the case appears to have been put on hold after it emerged Ribeiro has now been charged with arranging the assassination of chief superintendent João, which took place in October last year.
‘Connection’
Two weeks ago state media reported that the prosecutor at the Supreme Military Court in Luanda had ordered Ribeiro to be taken into custody in relation to this charge.
Some weeks earlier Beato Paulo, the head of investigation and prosecution at the attorney general’s office, told reporters at Voice of America that there was a connection between Ribeiro’s civilian theft case and the charges he was facing in the military court. “The police officer that was assassinated was a very important witness in the case relating to the missing $3.7-million. So, yes, there is a connection between the two,” he said.
According to some newspaper reports, chief superintendent João and his friend, prison officer Domingos Mizala Fonseca, were shot 15 times each in a drive-by shooting.
The shooting, in Viana, near the officer’s home, took place the day after João was released from custody, where he had been detained for four months and 15 days on a disciplinary charge supposedly related to death threats he made against fellow officers, which he denied.
In a letter to the attorney general, written by João before his death and printed in A Capital last month, the officer claimed he was the victim of several raids and attempts on his life.
He said these included being shot at in his car and chased on foot and he claimed that he was detained and tortured by the police on the orders of Ribeiro, who knew he was investigating the missing money.
With João now dead, sources close to the case say the prosecution is worried about the strength of its case against Ribeiro, who was suspended from the police force in October. No one at the office of the attorney general in Luanda would give the Mail & Guardian any information about the cases or confirm when either trial might begin.
Ribeiro remains in custody, with several other police officers, but his lawyer, Sergio Raimundo, has claimed to the media that the case, in particularly the allegations regarding the murder of João, has been mishandled and that his client should be released without charge.
Intriguing case
In spite of several attempts the M&G was not able to contact Raimundo, who has been threatened with disciplinary action by the Angolan Bar Association for his previous outspokenness to the media regarding Ribeiro’s case.
“There is a lot of intrigue around this case; it’s like an episode of CSI or something out of The Godfather,” a journalist in Luanda said, adding that few people were willing to talk on the record about what was happening.
“Ribeiro used to be seen as untouchable and he had good connections within the presidency, but all that seems to have changed now,” he said.
Marinao Bras, a reporter at A Capital, said: “Ribeiro is definitely a controversial character. When he was head of the traffic department he was probed for corruption. From what I understand, he is the cousin of Hélder Vieira Dias, known as Kopelipa, the minister of state for the military and, by marriage, he is the nephew of Ambrósio de Lemos, the commissioner of the national police.”
Meanwhile, the trial regarding the $160-million central bank embezzlement, of which Ribeiro’s alleged stash was just a small portion, began in May, with the first suspects appearing in court to answer the charges against them.
There are believed to have been several separate crime rings operating different scams to take money from Angola’s central bank. In some cases money was transferred into companies contracted for services that were never delivered, while several million dollars in cash are alleged to have been physically removed from the safe in the vaults of the central bank.
The investigation into the missing money was launched in 2009 after the then deputy finance minister Manuel da Cruz Neto noticed irregularities in funds linking the central bank and the finance ministry.
A string of bank accounts was frozen across a number of countries including Portugal, Germany, China, Dubai, Austria, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the United States.
Last month the Portuguese media reported several luxury cars had been seized in Lisbon in connection with the case. This follows the confiscation in Luanda of a number of Bentleys, Porsches, Mercedes and BMWs, also linked to the missing money.
Details of the case emerged at the height of Angola’s liquidity crisis and were acutely embarrassing for the government.
The central bank is now being led by José Lima de Massano, formerly president of Angola’s largest private bank, Banco Africano de Investimentos, and a number of management reforms have been implemented.
According to attorney general José Maria de Sousa, nearly $100-million of the missing $160-million has been recovered, but at least five suspects remain at large.