The Teflon Angolan, Álvaro Sobrinho, has had his office in Portugal searched on the orders of the Attorney General's Office as part of Operation Lex, involving Judge Rui Rangel and other defendants.The Angolan businessman is suspected of having bribed Judge Rui Rangel, who overturned a legal request to have Sobrinho’s assets seized, and will be accused of corruption should he ever dare return to Portugal.
Sobrinho is a former head of Banco Espírito Santo in Angola (BES-A) and already has been charged by the authorities in Mauritius, the island to which he moved after his name in Angola and Portugal became linked with corruption on an industrial scale.
Sobrinho already is in trouble in his new country where he stands accused of providing false information to the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius where he has been trying to establish a financial power base.
Sobrinho is suspected of pinching billions from BES-Angola in dodgy loans that were never repaid but, miraculously, he has avoided trial in Portugal.
BES-Angola granted US$6.5 billion of loans without compliance with internal regulations, without adequate record-keeping and without adequate collateral, leaving the bank with 90% of its loan portfolio at risk of being irrecoverable.
Some of the beneficiaries were top figures in the Angolan government. From bicycle owner to billionaire, the Angolan bought himself a network of influential people through his Planet Earth Institute, a charity whose trustees include Lord Paul Boateng, Sir Christopher Edwards, chairman of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital National Health Service Trust and Ameena Ghurib Fakim, President of the Republic of Mauritius.
In March 2016, the former head of the Espírito Santo Group, Ricardo Salgado, launched a book - 'Os dias do fim revelados’ (BES – the last days revealed) covering the events that led to the fall of the Espírito Santo Group. The book has a chapter dedicated to the former BES-Angola boss, whose appointment Salgado refers to as "one of the biggest mistakes of my career."
In April 2017, A Swiss court decided to keep frozen the €150 million that the BES-Angola president had tucked away in Swiss bank accounts.
The Portuguese prosecutor consistently has failed to make charges stick despite starting investigations in 2011 when Sobrinho had property and bank accounts frozen by the State.
The Angolan bought six apartments in the 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 fend off criminal charges for five years with successive decisions in his favour by the Court of Appeal of Lisbon, overseen, it now appears, by Judge Rui Rangel who Sobrinho may have settled up with later.
The fourth time that the Portuguese prosecutor ordered the seizure of Sobrinho’s assets 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 - but nothing seems to have happened since, until Operation Lex which seeks to prove Judge Rangel helped Sobrinho avoid trial.
Sobrinho has links to the family of José Eduardo dos Santos, the Angolan former President - Sobrinho is the Angolan president's nephew but this relationship may now be an impediment to his billionaire lifestyle, rather than an insurance policy.
Operation Lex includes defendants, Judge Rui Rangel, Jusge Fátima Galante (the former wife of Judge Rui Rangel), the lawyer Santos Martins, Benfica president Luís Filipe Vieira, the former president of the Portuguese Football Federation and lawyer João Rodrigues, among others, and is based on laws covering corruption, receipt of advantage, money laundering and tax fraud.
