Jailed Angolan tycoon Carlos São Vicente's wife fights to unfreeze Portugal bank accounts

Irene Neto, the wife of jailed Angolan tycoon Carlos São Vicente and a daughter of Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto, is fighting in Portugal's courts to unfreeze dozens of bank accounts held by her and her children, money that Angola now wants transferred to the state.

Portuguese authorities froze the accounts in 2020 at Angola's request, as Luanda went after assets linked to São Vicente, the former chairman of the AAA Seguros insurance group, which for about a decade held a monopoly on insuring Angola's oil industry. The balances of the accounts have not been made public.

On March 11, Lisbon's Central Criminal Investigation Court, which handles Portugal's most complex criminal cases, rejected the family's request to cancel the 2020 seizure. The court said it could no longer release the money because it had received a second request from Angola, dated 2024, asking for the balances to be paid over to the Angolan state.

Neto's lawyers took the case to the Lisbon Court of Appeal on Sept. 17. The family argues that its rights were violated because it was never given a chance to respond before the funds were seized. Neto says she is a victim of the Portuguese courts.

A doctor and longtime member of Angola's ruling MPLA party, Neto has described the case against her husband as political from the start. In October 2020, weeks after Angolan prosecutors froze her accounts at home, she accused the authorities of a "judicial and media massacre" against her family and said she was left "without means to pay my daily expenses."

Nine years in prison

São Vicente, who holds Portuguese and Angolan citizenship, was arrested in Luanda on Sept. 22, 2020. In March 2022, the District Court of Luanda convicted him of embezzlement, tax fraud and money laundering, sentenced him to nine years in prison and ordered him to compensate the state.

Prosecutors said he took control of the shares and profits of AAA, which began as an insurer owned by state oil company Sonangol, while he also ran Sonangol's risk management. They put Sonangol's loss at about $900 million. The judge said that over 16 years in charge of oil-sector insurance he had "played the role of referee and player."

São Vicente denies wrongdoing and calls the conviction illegal and politically motivated. He is held at Viana prison outside Luanda. His lawyers say he should have been freed on parole when he reached half his sentence on June 26, 2024, and again when he passed two-thirds in September 2025. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention raised concerns about his detention in 2023. He had surgery at a Luanda clinic in March that his lawyers said was not fully successful, and they have asked for his release on medical grounds.

Assets in four countries

Angola has already taken much of what he built at home. Prosecutors seized AAA's office buildings, 39 hotels and the 49% stake that his AAA Activos held in Standard Bank de Angola. The state sold 34% of the bank in a share offering last month that raised 208.5 billion kwanzas ($224 million), with South Africa's Standard Bank Group buying 24% to lift its holding to 75%.

Abroad, Geneva prosecutors froze about $900 million in accounts belonging to São Vicente and his family in 2018 on suspicion of money laundering. Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court partly lifted the freeze in March 2021, though money held in his own name stayed blocked. In Singapore, authorities seized Bank of Singapore accounts holding more than $558 million in his name, about $5 million belonging to Neto and $10.5 million belonging to their son Ivo.

President João Lourenço used his state-of-the-nation speech in October 2025 to press Switzerland to return "the large sums that they inexplicably hold in their banks and that belong to Angola." He said an Angolan court ruling, upheld on appeal by the Constitutional Court, orders such assets in Angola and abroad to revert to the state.