Angolan spat escalates over Vice-President accused of bribing a Portuguese public prosecutor

The international row between Portugal and its former-colony, Angola, is continuing with the African State media stating that the indictment of its Vice-President, Manuel Vincente, on fraud, bribery and money laundering charges just goes to show that 'there is international campaign especially orchestrated to denigrate the image of Angola and its main leaders in election year.'

Vincente has been charged in Portugal for bribing State prosecutor Orlando Figueir with €750,000 to drop a money laundering inquiry.

The Portuguese Public Prosecutor's Office formally accused Vincente a week ago as part of Operation Fizz.  

Vincente is Angola's vice-president and a former president of Sonangol, the State owned oil company.

Jornal de Angola led with the story on Saturday, stating that the case is a threat to relations between the two countries and that the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being ‘unfriendly and unreasonable.’ Earlier, Angolan officials describing the charges against their Vice-President as “neo-colonialism” and “revenge by the former colonial master.”

Angolan protested against the accusations, "which have been made by forces interested in disrupting or even destroying the friendly relations existing between the two countries."

This week’s scheduled three day visit to Angola by the Minister of Justice, Francisca Van Dunem, has been postponed at the request of the Angolan authorities. There now are questions over the Prime Minister’s scheduled visit to Angola this Spring.

The Angolan government said that relations with Portugal should concentrate "on mutually advantageous relations, creating synergies and deepening the areas of economic, cultural, political, diplomatic and social cooperation."

Manuel Vincente is not up for election as President this year as his party did not select him.

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