New Journal
September 3, 2020 at 1:35 pm
Updated today at 11:36
–In an article available only to subscribers, the Brazilian newspaper writes that José Eduardo dos Santos will answer questions in writing, at the request of Lula da Silva, who intends to show that the relationship between the Brazilian business group Odebrecht and the Angolan government existed before the Workers’ Party (PT) came to power.
Lula da Silva is being accused of having influenced contracts signed between BNDES and Odebrecht in Angola.
The Brazilian newspaper writes that Judge Vallisney Oliveira, of the 10th Federal Court of Brasília, determined that the defendants send their questions to the former Angolan President and to other ministers – without however advancing which ones – who will have participated in the contracts and on the BNDES credit line with Odebrecht.
The relations between the Angolan government and Odebrecht have fed the pages of international newspapers. In June, the newspaper El Pais wrote that the Brazilian company, through Klienfeld, a company with no activity used by the construction company to buy the wishes of politicians and senior officials, transferred a total of four million euros between 2008 and 2009 to an account with the Bank Privada d’Andorra (BPA) by economist Edson N’Dalu Leite de Morais, son of ex-finance minister, José Pedro de Morais.
The newspaper, which will have had access to a report by the Unidad Inteligencia Financiera de Andorra (UIFAND) that calls into question that Leite de Morais, “a businessman with interests in Angola and Brazil, is the true owner of these funds”. And he himself maintained that his account was used to “pay third parties”.
El Pais said that, from this account, 101 thousand euros were transferred in 2009 to José Pedro de Morais, former governor of the National Bank of Angola and finance minister between 2002 and 2008.
“This former member of the Government of ex-president José Eduardo dos Santos received the money in two American accounts of Bank of America and Eurobank”, wrote the newspaper, which claimed to have tried unsuccessfully to contact Leite de Morais and José Pedro de Morais.
The account of the “alleged economist” was also used to “pay a catamaran, worth 178 thousand euros, a truck (257,000), a Mercedes Benz (132,000), a Ford F550 truck (85,000), personal watercraft and a motorcycle -four.
The Spanish newspaper continued, explaining that Leite de Morais sent a total of 557 thousand euros in October 2009 to Intrepid Southeast, a Florida company dedicated to the sale of boats, having transferred 422,500 euros in July 2010 to another Miami yacht sales company.
“The payments were requested through internal transfers, a system that leaves no trace. And the money traveled from the BPA account of the instrumental company of Odebrecht to that of Leite de Morais, which covered its name in the shadow of the company Panamenha Barton International SA” , wrote the diary.
“The account of the Angolan businessman in Andorra was fed by the four million that the Brazilian construction giant transferred to him through Klienfeld, a trader established on the Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda”, read in the piece, which cited the report that arrived at the hands of El Pais journalists: “This is the signature of the Brazilian construction company that used to pay bribes”.
The researchers who signed the report maintain that “it is not possible to know who is the real owner of the funds of Leite de Morais” and they place their purchases of luxury products “in a system of integration of funds”, wrote the newspaper, who said that Andorra’s Attorney General’s Office asked the investigating judge in the Odebrecht case to seize Leite de Morais’ accounts at the BPA for an alleged crime of money laundering.
Also according to the newspaper, which supported its investigation in the UIFAND report, another of the webs used by the Brazilian construction giant to “anoint the hands” of Angolan politicians was – according to the researchers – Rosa Paulo Francisco Bento’s BPA account.
Emílio Odebrecht’s revelations about the relationship built with José Eduardo dos Santos are part of a previous report to the testimonies provided in the meantime under the award plea agreement established with the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) of Brazil, within the scope of the Lava Jato operation .
– .
