Angolan tycoon Carlos Manuel de Sao Vicente sentenced to nine years over graft

Angolan entrepreneur Carlos Manuel de Sao Vicente has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a local court for embezzlement, tax fraud and money laundering, according to a report by Novo Jornal, a Luanda-based newspaper.

The court also asked the Angolan government to confiscate the tycoon’s assets.

De Sao Vicente, a Portuguese-Angolan citizen, was a prominent figure in Angola’s oil industry, heading the privately-owned AAA Seguros group, which sold insurance and reinsurance contracts to the state oil company, Sonangol. He simultaneously served as the chairman and CEO of AAA Seguros and a managing director at Sonangol from 2000 to 2016. Angolan authorities allege that Sao Vicente used his position to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from business conducted with foreign oil companies operating in Angola during the rule of former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Sao Vicente maintains that he is innocent. He was detained by Angolan authorities in 2020 after they froze $900 million of his assets in several bank accounts in Switzerland.

Angola is still reeling from former President dos Santos’s 38-year rule, during which key positions were awarded to his cronies and wealth amassed by a select few.

President Joao Lourenco, who took over from dos Santos in 2017, has launched a wide-scale campaign against corruption and a large-scale purge of the dos Santos administration.

The opposition, however, claims the campaign is politically driven.