The Swiss justice system has proved deaf to the reasons offered by Álvaro Sobrinho as to the source of his fortune.
Sobrinho, the former head of Banco Espírito Santo in Angola, has been under investigation by the Portuguese Public Prosecution Service since 2011 but so far has remained ahead in the various court procedures seeking to prove him a crook of the highest order.
A Swiss court has decided to keep frozen the €150 million that the BES-Angola president has tucked away in Swiss bank accounts despite a Lisbon court failing to pin anything on the banker and releasing Sobrinho’s seized property assets and bank accounts.
The Portuguese prosecutor’s performance failed to get a result despite starting its campaign in 2011 when Sobrinho had property and bank accounts frozen by the State.
The Angolan had aroused suspicion by buying six apartments in the luxury Estoril-Sol condominium for €9.5 million. The Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) was more than a little suspicious as to the source of the money but Sobrinho has managed to repel criminal charges for the last five years with successive decisions in his favour by the Court of Appeal of Lisbon.
In Switzerland, where the banker has several bank accounts, he has not had the same luck and the Swiss Federal Criminal Court has refused to release the €150 million, frozen in a Credit Suisse account since early 2015.
The Swiss court’s judgement was revealed by the newspaper ‘SonntagsZeitung’ and its French version, ‘Le Matin Dimanche.’
Both the Portuguese and the Swiss decisions were based on largely the same suspicions that Álvaro Sobrinho allegedly diverted more than USD500 million from BES-Angola by his approval of unsecured lending to companies under his covert control, the money then being diverted to relatives’ bank accounts.
The Swiss Federal Criminal Court says that although the Lisbon court overturned the seizures in Portugal ordered by the Public Prosecutor's Office this does not affect the case being considered by the Swiss judges.
"The seizures in Portugal were issued in a complex set of facts that are different from those under investigation by the Swiss authorities which meet the requirements of a different legal system," reads the judgment.
In Portugal, the criminal investigation that began in 2011 triggered by the purchase of the Estoril-Sol apartments, led prosecutors to believe the money came from BES-Angola where €500 million is said to be missing.
The fourth time that the DCIAP ordered the seizure of Sobrinho’s assets and accounts was in November 2016. The Prosecutor's Office alleged at that time that it had solid evidence from telephone tapping carried out in 2012 in another criminal process.
As for the loans, Sobrinho says that he “merely signed papers.”
The five suspicious companies (Cross Fund, Govest, Saimo, Socidesa and Vaningo) received a USD843 million loan from BES-Angola to buy the Escom towers in Luanda, but only about USD440 million was used for this purpose.
The remaining USD343 million loaned to these companies has no justification recorded by the bank.
Ricardo Salgado's book, ‘BES - Os Dias do Fim Revelados’ covers the events that led to the fall of the Espírito Santo Group, with an acerbic chapter reserved for Álvaro Sobrinho whose appointment Salgado refers to as "one of the biggest mistakes of my career."
Sobrinho has an impressive CV with a solid career in asset management, a sound background in mathematics and important links to the family of José Eduardo dos Santos, the Angolan President as Sobrinho is the Angolan president's nephew.
Sobrinho currently is working his way into society in Mauritius where French-language newspaper L’Express reports that the local ‘ministry of good governance’ suspects that Sobrinho set up a local foundation to ‘mask illicit activities’.
Until such time as Sobrinho is found guilty, he remains free to spend his money as he likes but the legal storm clouds seem to be gathering with the Swiss prosecutors intent on coming up with charges that will stick.
