Luanda - Former director of the defunct Office for Revitalisation and Execution of Institutional Communication and Marketing (Grecima), Manuel Rabelais, said Thursday that lack of money forced him to request the Central Bank of Angola (BNA) to join the free buying and selling foreign currency process.
The defendant told this to the Court during the hearing session held on Thursday in Luanda.
Rabelais is accused of crimes of embezzlement, money laundering and violation of budget execution rules, between 2016 and 2017.
He said he voluntarily decided to make the decision due the financial constraints at Grecima, caused by the economic and financial crisis in that period.
He explained that Grecima was an organ whose regulation should have its financial and administrative autonomy, which never occurred in practice.
He justified that Grecima remained about four months without benefiting from financial allocation from the Ministry of Finance.
As for the way Grecima managed the assets, he said it was done through Semba Comunicação company, with which Grecima had signed an agreement on service provision.
The defendant explained that the money was allocated by the Ministry of Finance to Semba Comunicação, through the Security Affairs Office to the President of Republic.
To ensure its functioning, Grecima needed an amount estimate between USD 90 million and USD 100 million, but due to financial crisis the amount never reached the body, he underlined.
He added the only value of AKz 121 million he received in 2017 was used to pay off the debts related to services the institution incurred locally and abroad.
Manuel Rabelais is accused of having transformed GRECIMA into an exchange bureau to sell foreign currency.
To ensure his business, he is said to have established link with the Central Bank of Angola (BNA) and other banking institutions such as BCI, BIC, BPC, BAI and Sol.
The Central Bank had confirmed the sale of 98.1 million euros, equivalent to 18.3 billion kwanzas.
