Fighting Corruption Revisited: Five Years of Selective Injustice

By Irene Alexandra Neto

I write not only as a citizen concerned with justice in Angola, but also as the wife of Carlos Manuel de São Vicente, who has been living this reality in a direct and painful way for five years.

The fight against corruption was presented in 2017 as a central banner of Angolan governance. Its legitimacy is unquestionable: no society can prosper if corruption becomes the rule. However, this struggle cannot be confused with envy and personal persecution, arbitrariness or violation of fundamental rights. When this happens, it becomes an instrument of injustice and undermines the rule of law itself.

The case of Carlos Manuel de São Vicente has become a worrying example of this distortion. Tried in a process marked by procedural irregularities, absence of consistent evidence and successive legal violations, he served, on September 22, the fifth year of deprivation of liberty in Viana. Throughout this period, there were multiple occasions in which the law determined his release and, even so, this was denied.

• In 2020, 2021 and 2022, habeas corpus requests were ignored, and preventive detention was maintained beyond the legal limits.
• In 2023, despite Opinion 63/2023 of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which called for his immediate release, Angola did not comply with its international obligations.
• In 2024, when he reached half of the sentence, the release was again blocked due to administrative inertia in the General Directorate of Prison Services of the Ministry of the Interior and in the Luanda District Court, in violation of the law.
• In 2025, for the fourth time, parole after two-thirds of the sentence was refused, in clear violation of the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

This succession of decisions raises an inevitable question: what kind of fight against corruption is this which, instead of respecting the law, systematically circumvents it?

Justice cannot be confused with revenge. It must be based on legality, transparency and respect for human dignity. However, the way in which this process was conducted turned businessmen into political enemies, confiscated assets without evidence of corruption and affected entire families, including innocent third parties and economic dependents who have nothing to do with the accusations.

The social consequences were serious. Lawful businesses were closed, jobs disappeared, and wealth was destroyed without any strategy of productive substitution. It is legitimate to ask: is this justice or political revenge? How can families survive deprived of all their livelihood? Why chase families into forced exile, seizing their homes? To accuse is not to prove. Whoever accuses, must prove it. It is not the innocent who has to prove his innocence. Such a practice raises serious concerns regarding respect for the law and the protection of fundamental rights and guarantees, enshrined in the Angolan Constitution and in international treaties ratified by the country.

From a legal point of view, the issue is equally alarming. Article 36 of the Constitution guarantees the right to liberty and security. Article 13 enshrines the prevalence of ratified international conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By violating articles 9 and 14 of the first and 9, 10 and 11 of the second, Angola exposed itself to international censorship and weakened the credibility of its judicial system.

In view of the illegalities and irregularities of the judicial process and the arrest on 22 September 2020, a complaint was lodged with the United Nations in 2021. The UN Human Rights Council issued Opinion No. 63/2023, on November 14, 2023 and demanded the immediate release of São Vicente. Angola did not comply.

The illegally seized goods were not mere symbols of ostentation: they were flourishing businesses, which employed national labour, trained and professionalized young people. When they were abruptly closed, unemployment and exclusion increased, and wealth was destroyed. How many jobs have been eliminated? How many were created to replace them? Did this negative accounting, presented as redistributive, serve the country? Or did it benefit only a few new holders, rewarding them without experience or effort, almost always in non-transparent ways?

The metaphor is well known: power presents itself as a modern-day Robin Hood, taking goods from the “rich” to supposedly give back to the “poor”. But, as my mother-in-law Ilda reminded us, “to take is not to put”. Without productive investment, without cost containment, without vision or strategy, what is quickly taken away is exhausted. The people entertain themselves for a moment, as in the bloody Roman Colosseum, but soon realize that they have reached zero again.

It is true that justice is done by men and, as such, is fallible. Justice erred because it did not respect the law, for deciding without evidence, for adopting unconstitutional legislation, for unreasonable haste in approving measures that were insufficiently considered, for political or institutional constraints. But if it failed, it has to have the humility to admit it. The greatness of a judicial system is not in never failing, but in recognizing its mistakes and repairing the injustices caused. Persisting in arbitrary decisions does not strengthen the fight against corruption — it undermines it, turning it into a punitive spectacle that destroys social trust.

If justice is converted into a show, persecution and revenge, not into legality and truth, what future can we expect from this justicialist present? It can only be one of institutional fragility, social discredit and legal insecurity. Justice without justice does not build radiant futures.

In the fifth year of his detention, São Vicente faces serious health problems, which motivated his recent hospitalization in Luanda. This adds urgency to the issue. The right of any citizen to adequate medical care and due process is non-negotiable: it is a constitutional and human imperative.

The fight against corruption will only be effective if it is conducted within the law and with respect for fundamental rights. São Vicente has the right to have rights. When cases like this are allowed to linger in this framework of irregularities, what is built is not justice, but arbitrariness.

After five years in prison, with his life at risk and in the face of successive illegalities, it is time to correct this mistake. Respect for international law, the Constitution and the applicable criminal legislation requires the immediate release of Carlos Manuel de São Vicente.

Luanda, September 30, 2025