More than $100b illegally withdrawn from Angola: AG
Thursday April 28 2022
More than $100 billion was illegally withdrawn from Angolan treasury until 2017 in illicit transfers, Attorney General says. PHOTO | FILE | AFP
More than $100 billion was illegally withdrawn from Angolan treasury until 2017, in illicit transfers, and the cash was stashed abroad, the country's Attorney General said Wednesday in Luanda.
In 2017, President João Lourenço took over from José Eduardo dos Santos following a general election marking the end of dos Santos' 38-year reign and launched an anticorruption campaign that his predecessor regime.
In 2017, Transparency international corruption perception index ranked Angola 167 out of 180 countries surveyed, in 2021 after four years the southern Africa was ranked 136. This suggests that, the anticorruption campaign has borne fruits.
“Sectors such as construction, public works, oil and diamonds were the most affected with the illegal transfer of cash from Angola to foreign destinations.”
“In the last three years more than $5 billion were recovered in financial and non-financial, as well as another $12 billion seized in some cases, while other cases culminated in the seizure of movable assets constituted with public funds,” Mr Hélder Pitta Groz said at the opening ceremony of an International Conference.
According to the government official, out of the $12 billion, $6.7 billion were seized in Angola and the remaining cash abroad in countries such as Portugal, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Monaco.