The governor of the National Bank of Angola has given assurances that there has been voluntary repatriation of capital during a six-month grace period, without requesting the benefits granted by the law in force, the Angolan press reported.

José de Lima Massano responded to a request for clarification from members of the Angolan parliament in the discussion of the proposed law to revise the General State Budget for 2019 on the process of repatriation of capital started in June 2018 and which had a grace period of six months, until it entered the coercive phase on 26 December of the same year.

The governor, who did not mention any figures, said only that during the six months of voluntary repatriation, “there was no case of requests for the benefits that the law grants.”

Information released last April by Eduarda Rodrigues, director of the National Asset Recovery Service of the Attorney General’s Office, showed that Angola had not been able to recover any money on a voluntary basis, but it had forcibly recovered close to US$4 billion in cash and goods.

In January 2018, it was announced that Angolan citizens with undeclared foreign deposits of over US$100,000 would be given a period of six months to repatriate those funds without being subjected to any criminal, tax or exchange investigation under a bill of the Extraordinary Regime of Tax and Exchange Regulation to be prepared by the National Bank of Angola. (Macauhub)