An investigation is currently ongoing in Geneva, Switzerland. Mr de São Vicente strongly denies all charges and has cooperated fully with the investigating authority in order to get to the truth. 

Mr de São Vicente is not part of a kleptocratic regime, but simply a businessman who has made his fortune in the private sector, particularly in the insurance and reinsurance of oil operations in Angola. 

Mr de São Vicente has never been convicted and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

How it started

The Swiss proceedings were launched on 7 November 2018, when a Geneva-based bank addressed a suspicious activity report to the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS) following two regular transactions ordered by Mr de São Vicente. The reason for the report was alleged suspicions of “aggravated tax offences”. On 4 and 7 December 2018, the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office issued freezing orders in relation to the accounts held in Geneva by Mr de São Vicente, his family and his companies. Although Mr de São Vicente had demonstrated the lawfulness of his tax status and that of his companies with legal opinions and tax certificates established by the Angolan and Bermudan tax authorities, the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered for alleged acts of money-laundering of an alleged not yet identified financial offence committed in Angola. Mr de São Vicente was formally charged on 21 March 2019. The offence considered by the Swiss authorities at this stage concerned the alleged criminal mismanagement of the AAA Group of companies, i.e. companies that Mr de São Vicente owned and operated for more than 10 years without any complaints or legal proceedings.

Mr de Sao Vicente’s cooperation

From the start of the proceedings, Mr de São Vicente has actively cooperated with the Swiss authorities, providing all the necessary documents and evidence. He attended a hearing in March 2019 and provided answers to all the authority’s questions, notably on the shareholding structure of the group and the various financial flows. The explanations provided led to the release of more than one third of the frozen assets. The freezing order on Mr de São Vicente’s personal account has been partially maintained, along with the one on his company, AAA International Ltd.

In early 2020, the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office heard a partner in the renowned international audit firm Mazars, in his capacity as auditor of AAA Seguros SA, the insurance company of the AAA Group. This witness fully confirmed the explanations given by Mr de São Vicente during his hearings and in the various correspondence sent to the investigating authority. 

Request to release the seized assets

After Mr de São Vicente had demonstrated the lawfulness of his activity and assets, which had been confirmed by the companies’ auditor, he requested that the freezing order be fully lifted on his and AAA International Ltd’s account and the proceedings terminated. 

Both requests were, however, rejected by the Public Prosecutor, on the sole basis that a request for mutual legal assistance in criminal matters had been addressed in the meantime to the Angolan authorities, said request having actually been submitted two days before the refusal decision. 

In its decision, the Public Prosecutor’s Office expressly stated that the documentation produced had explained and justified (i) the structure and ownership of the AAA Group, (ii) the activity of the AAA Group, and (iii) the financial flows under investigation.

Such considerations should clearly have led to the lifting of the freezing orders and termination of the proceedings.

Both Mr de São Vicente and AAA International Ltd appealed against these refusals. As far as AAA International Ltd is concerned, the matter was ultimately brought to the Swiss Supreme Court, which on 10 March 2021 overturned the Geneva Court of Justice’s refusal to release the funds, judging the seizure of AAA International Ltd’s assets as insufficiently motivated, especially considering that explanations had been provided by the company. The freezing order was maintained, but the case was sent back to the Court of Justice for a re-examination. To date, the Court of Justice has still not issued a new decision.

Regarding Mr de São Vicente’s personal account, the Geneva Court of Justice refused to lift the freezing order as it considered that such a measure should be maintained pending certain clarifications, especially the outcome of the letter of request sent to Angola by the Swiss Prosecutor.

Angola’s answer to the Swiss letter of request

On 3 September 2020, the Public Prosecutor’s Office received the answer of the Angolan General Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) to the letter of request. 

The Angolan authorities concluded that there was no evidence in Angola that Mr de São Vicente had ever committed a crime of bribery, money laundering, economic participation in business or any other crime related to the facts described in the Swiss letter of request. In other words, the answer fully confirmed the explanations given by Mr de São Vicente in the context of the Geneva criminal proceedings.

The cover letter of the PGR, dated 13 August 2020, expressly confirmed that this conclusion was reached after having carried out all the measures requested by the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office and having analysed all the documents collected (more than 1,000 pages of documentation attached to PGR’s said communication).

However, shockingly and in complete contradiction to the answer to the letter of request (which confirmed the legality of Mr de São Vicente’s activities), the Angolan authorities launched a criminal investigation against Mr de São Vicente barely a few weeks later, regarding the same facts. The latter led to his incarceration on 22 September 2020. 

These same authorities had been aware of the proceedings in Switzerland and the amounts involved for many months, via the above mentioned Swiss rogatory letter. In fact, it was only after the case had been covered by a very negative media campaign in Angola and internationally, that the Angolan authorities – put under pressure by the media and the political authorities – decided to take measures against Mr de São Vicente.

It is worth stressing that the proceedings currently pending in Angola are being handled by the same PGR’s department that answered to the Swiss letter of request, i.e. the “D.N.I.A.P.”. Furthermore, it appears that certain Prosecutors who intervened in the execution of the Swiss letter of request (which confirmed the total lawfulness of Mr de São Vicente’s activities) are active in the criminal proceedings in Angola.

It is now clear that the main goal of the Angolan authorities is to provide, despite the innocence of Mr de São Vicente, a scapegoat for the Angolan people and to recover Mr de São Vicente’s assets that are frozen in Switzerland, in a context of unprecedented economic and social crisis in Angola. 

In October 2020, Mr de São Vicente renewed his request to lift the freezing order on his assets based on the conclusions of the answer given by the Angolan authorities to the Swiss letter of request. The Geneva Public Prosecutor refused it, this time on the basis of the existence of the pending Angolan proceedings. 

An appeal was filed against this decision, which is currently pending before the Geneva Court of Justice.

The Swiss proceedings are now based solely on the existence of the Angolan proceedings, which in turn have no concrete basis and are entirely illegal both on their merits and in the way the proceedings are being handled.

The Angolan authorities seem willing to undertake any possible measure to pressure Mr de São Vicente into renouncing his assets and funds. From this fateful perspective, the Angolan authorities have absolutely no qualms about violating Mr de São Vicente’s most fundamental rights, especially by keeping him in prison for more than a year, although he has not been convicted in either Angola or Switzerland.

Possible forfeiture of the assets held in Switzerland?

Even if Mr de São Vicente were to be convicted in Angola against all the evidence, the Angolan authorities would have the greatest difficulty in recovering the funds held in Switzerland, as there are strict rules to be respected under Swiss law to grant such mutual legal assistance.

Switzerland will indeed not cooperate with a foreign State and transfer funds if the latter does not respect the defendant’s fundamental rights and in particular, the principle of due process, in its proceedings. Several systematic breaches of this fundamental principle can be detected in the Angolan proceedings against Mr de São Vicente. 

The defence team is willing to fight unswervingly for Mr de São Vicente’s rights and undertake any available legal steps to ensure that no assistance will be provided in the framework of these illegal and disconcerting proceedings.

In any case, even if the impossible were to happen and Switzerland were willing, at some point in time, to grant its assistance to the Angolan authorities, the transmission of funds would take several years, as the Swiss authorities would request clear explanations from Angola on how these funds would be allocated and wish to define specific projects, which would be decided jointly.

Mr de São Vicente’s arrest

After being interrogated only twice by the Angolan General Prosecutor’s Office (“PGR”) and despite a formal confirmation issued a few weeks before by the same authority that there were no indications of the commission of a possible crime, Mr de São Vicente was incarcerated in Luanda on 22 September 2020 without any valid grounds. 

He was detained at the end of his last hearing and was only informed of his own incarceration after the media, which reported the news before any formal notification to Mr de São Vicente or his lawyers. 

Under the false assumption that he might flee (although he had had two years to do so if he had wanted to and could have fled the country after the first hearing), the PGR ordered his incarceration in Viana prison, a sordid facility where convicted criminals are mixed with people in pre-trial detention. 

The conditions of detention are deplorable, particularly given the lack of hygiene, running water and medical care (Mr de São Vicente’s diabetes and chronic diseases are being ignored) and widespread violence. 

Seizure of Mr de Sao Vicente’s assets

All the assets held by Mr de São Vicente, his family and his companies were seized at the beginning of September 2020. In particular, the PGR seized all the buildings held by the AAA group and the hotels built and managed by Mr de São Vicente through his companies. The decisions issued in this respect were never formally notified and no reasons were given.

Since then, these buildings and hotels have been extremely poorly managed – to say the least – by the Angolan authorities, in particular by the Cofre Geral de Justiça.

As a result, while some of the hostels were no longer able to provide the necessary level of quality to their customers because of the lack of management, others had to cease operations as no payments were processed by the authorities for the more than 600 employees working them, or for local service providers.  

The impact on the life of hundreds of Angolan families, as well as on the Angolan financial sector, are catastrophic. The authorities have clearly been acting without any consideration for public well-being and the country’s interests.

This acknowledgment is even more inacceptable in that the PGR has no concrete evidence against Mr de São Vicente and has seemed only to react to misleading information reported by the media since early September 2020, and to political pressure. 

Indeed, in August 2020, few weeks before Mr de São Vicente’s incarceration, the PGR had confirmed to the Swiss authorities that after having carried out multiple investigative measures and analysed all the documents collected, they concluded that there was no evidence in Angola of the commission of any crime by Mr de São Vicente, whether of bribery, money laundering or other financial offences. 

The report and the numerous exhibits submitted in support of this communication confirm these conclusions in detail. 

Violations of basic human rights

The violations of the right to a due process in the pending Angolan proceedings are systemic. Some examples are listed here: 

• For several months and despite his incarceration, Mr de São Vicente had no access to his criminal file, in particular to the minutes of his own hearings and the pieces of alleged evidence used against him. Right after the notice of the charges against him, Mr de São Vicente was even denied access to his criminal file until the last day of the deadline to request the production of additional evidence in view of the pre-trial hearing. Such access was granted only for two hours and without permission to obtain a copy of the proceedings, which consequently prevented Mr de São Vicente from making a duly informed request for additional evidence.
• The appeals and applications filed by Mr de São Vicente’s defence are systematically rejected – with poorly motivated decisions – or simply ignored.
• The buildings seized have been already allocated to several authorities, notably the PGR and the Ministry of Justice, which are now gradually moving into the premises. Such an allocation is extremely shocking and entirely unlawful, since no judgment to convict or confiscate has been handed down. In addition, it constitutes an obvious violation of Mr de São Vicente’s presumption of innocence. 
• Access to his lawyers is very difficult and not guaranteed. Visits have already been refused by the prison authorities to both local and foreign counsels.
• Representatives of the PGR put unlawful and unacceptable pressure on Mr de São Vicente when, during the first weeks of his detention, they visited him in prison without notice and without the presence of his lawyers. During this visit they tried to convince Mr de São Vicente to renounce his entire wealth in exchange for his liberty. 
• Representation and defence by Mr de São Vicente’s lawyer of choice has been refused on baseless grounds.

In March 2021, the PGR issued a formal indictment and transferred the case to the First Instance Tribunal in Luanda. These charges are groundless and based on several undocumented pieces of speculation. In particular, the main piece of evidence used by the PGR in its indictment is an unsigned and undated report produced without any supporting documentation. 

A pre-trial hearing took place in May 2021. At the end of this hearing, which lasted only a few days, the sole judge considered that the case could be addressed on the merits. 

It is worth mentioning that the period under scrutiny covers almost 20 years, that there are multiple entities involved, based in several jurisdictions, and that the factual background is complex and very specific. Already on the basis of the time spent for the investigations (only six months), it appears evident that the results put forward are not credible.

Although pre-trial detention is limited in Angola by law to one year maximum, the detention of Mr de São Vicente has been extended beyond this timeframe on two occasions on the basis of alleged “extraordinary” circumstances. 

There are no indications on when the trial will take place.

The defence is working relentlessly to defend the interests of Mr de São Vicente despite the clear bias of the proceedings and the unfair treatment he has received throughout the process.