In the session this Monday, the collective judge Anabela Valente once again noted the absence of this company, after having already been notified last week to appear in court and appoint a representative.
According to the judge, as the company does not want to appoint a representative, the Court will appoint a public defender to regularize the situation.
Speaking to the press, the lawyer for the other two companies involved in the case, Benja Satula, regretted the delays that have been occurring since the trial began on the 10th of this month, despite acknowledging that they are "well-founded".
"In fact, it is beginning to represent a strain here, because the main objective is for us to produce evidence and seek to discover the procedurally valid truth, and the successive postponements, in fact, create embarrassment and anguish here," he said.
The representative of the companies Plansmart International Limited and Utter Right International Limited, also defendants in the case, highlighted that CIF Angola has never been present since the sessions began.
Benja Satula stressed that the presence of the accused is mandatory under penalty of nullity of the proceedings, considering the issue of CIF Angola to be legally complex.
The lawyer said that one of CIF Angola's partner companies, which holds 60 percent of the shares, handed over its share to the State, in addition to 100 percent of the assets of the CIF Angola universe.
"At this moment, technically speaking, the State is a partner of CIF Angola with Utter Right International and Plansmart International Limited. The truth is that, since this happened, no acts of legal-administrative conformation of this delivery of shares have ever been carried out", he added.
The Supreme Court began judging this month the co-defendants Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior "Kopelipa", Leopoldino do Nascimento "Dino", former strongmen of former president José Eduardo dos Santos, lawyer Fernando Gomes dos Santos, Yiu Haiming, and the companies China International Fund (CIF), Plansmart International Limited and Utter Right International Limited.
The companies were allegedly used by the defendants to set up a scheme involving a financing agreement between Angola and China to support national reconstruction after the civil war, which also included the China International Fund and its subsidiaries and Sonangol, whose former president Manuel Vicente is named several times in the indictment.
The co-defendants are accused of the crimes of embezzlement, fraud through fraud, document forgery, criminal association, abuse of authority, money laundering and influence peddling.
The next session, scheduled for a week from now, is intended for the presentation of responses to the preliminary questions raised by the defenses.
