Luanda, ANGOLA, June 6 - The former Transports minister, Augusto Tomás, last Wednesday in court stated that he organised his economic life in the year 1992, before he took up governmental posts.,

At the Supreme Court hearing, the former Cabinet minister said that he put his financial situation in order after implementing an estates management programme, which he did not specify.  

 

In the first day of the trial, last Friday (May 31), the Public Prosecutor's Office accused Augusto Tomás of illegally appropriating more than 1 billion Kwanzas, 40 million dollars and 13 million euros from the National Shippers Council (CNC), which operates under the umbrella of the Transports Ministry.

 

The defendant explained that in 1992, when he was an MP, he acquired a bank credit of 60 million US Dollars, which he invested in the purchase and renting of real estates, including land plots.   

"At no moment did I receive this money," the former Transports minister (2008 to 2018) told the court.

 

During the interrogation, the Public Prosecutor accused Augusto Tomás of engaging in fraudulent artifices and swindled the Angola State of funds that were afterwards used to make his own companies and other private institutions capitalise.

 

The former minister is being tried alongside other prominent cadres of the sector, namely Isabel Cristina de Ceita Bragança and Rui Manuel Moita (former deputy general directors, respectively for Finance and Technical Matters of the CNC), Manuel António Paulo, former general director of the CNC and Eurico da Silva, former deputy director for Administration and Finances.  

 

All of the defendants are responding to accusations of having committed the crimes of embezzlement, violation of the norms on budget execution and continued abuse of power.

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