Banif’s web. The title of the book by journalist António José Vilela summarizes how the former Banco Internacional do Funchal was used by the Angolan elite for money laundering and corruption in Portugal and to create a network from that financial institution.
In the foreword to this book, edited by Casa das Letras, João Paulo Batalha writes: “From the investigation into an obscure attempt by figures from the Angolan state to discreetly buy a smaller bank of the Portuguese financial system (Banif), we bought into a proxy by the Angolans (Operation Fizz), the money laundering and tax evasion at the service of the powerful in Portugal (Operação Monte Branco and Hurricane); the culture of influence that Armando Vara, one of the greatest business politicians ( Face Oculta), (…) to the money laundering machine that Isabel dos Santos and other Angolan bigwigs set up in the Portuguese financial system and to the top of this corruption economy that dominated the country for years, in the economic plan (BES) and in the political plan (Operation Marquis).”
This web then begins, as explained by António José Vilela, deputy director of the magazine Saturdayin an attempt to gain control of this bank, founded in 1988, a project of private investors, including Horácio Roque.
In this multi-year investigation, the journalist uncovers hundreds of unpublished documents, wiretaps – some between Armando Vara and José Sócrates, former Prime Minister involved in Operation Marquês – and confidential emails. The bank will have been used to “launder” 1.5 billion euros in cases involving the Angolan elite and even linked to the “Lava Jato” case in Brazil.
Isabel dos Santos and beyond
António José Vilela shows that the Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos was not the only face of this opaque business plan in our country, to which the Portuguese financial system turns a blind eye.
His sister Tchizé dos Santos, also a businesswoman, the then administrator of Sonangol, Manuel Vicente, the banker Carlos José da Silva, or General Kopelipa, close to the then Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, were central figures in the movement of millions through the Portuguese banks.
“This is the story of a cursed bank (and Millenium BCP, BPI, BPA Atlântico and Eurobic and their bankers) that laundered more than 1.5 billion public money. A case that is still under investigation,” said the author.
Still in the foreword, João Paulo Batalha delivers “bad news” that the book reveals: “There is a core of corruption at the center of the democratic regime in Portugal, encompassing politics, finance, economics and important parts of the judiciary”.
The full investigation in A Teia do Banif has been carried out largely through consultation with the judicial investigations of various trials and shows “ineffectiveness of the judiciary in prosecuting and sentencing those responsible”.
The book mentions phone tapping between Portuguese officials intersecting with the Banif case. “The criminal acts of the Face Oculta/Attack on the State of Law and Banif cases were quite different, but two unlikely links emerged to link them: various voice and text conversations about the Banif bank were recorded from the phones of Armando Vara (with Sócrates and others), and then documents were found in the office of the administrator of Millenium BCP,” writes António José Vilela.
The Deputy Director of Saturday this work also shows how most of the processes opened in Angola eventually fell by the wayside, as the Angolan power always managed to control the entire system.
Source: DN
