Carrinho and the Risks Angola’s Central Bank Must Confront
Carrinho has controlled Banco de Comércio e Indústria since December 2021. In August 2024, the competition authority cleared its takeover of Banco Keve, subject to central bank approval. It has also acquired 7.61 per cent of BFA through its subsidiary Congolian Financial. If consolidated, these interests could give the group influence over roughly 30 per cent of Angola’s banking market.
This expansion comes as Angola faces heightened international scrutiny. The Financial Action Task Force placed it on its grey list in October 2024, citing strategic weaknesses in its defences against money laundering and terrorist financing. The European Union added Angola to its list of high-risk third countries in 2025, requiring European financial institutions to apply enhanced checks to relevant transactions.
Such scrutiny exposes the gap between the government’s rhetoric and the credibility of its financial institutions. The Carrinho transaction brings two systemic risks into sharp focus.
The first is the integration of banking with the businesses it finances. Carrinho dominates essential food supply chains, controls critical logistics infrastructure and depends heavily on public contracts and sovereign guarantees. Banks within its orbit could become sources of funding for its own factories, transport operations and expansion plans, weakening the independence of lending decisions.
Where supervision is already fragile, such connections can transmit losses across a group and into the wider financial system. A setback in an industrial business can become a bank’s liquidity or solvency problem. Concentrated exposures and lending to related companies weaken market discipline and leave depositors vulnerable to commercial decisions over which they have no control.
The second risk is financial opacity. Carrinho does not publish consolidated accounts. That is lawful, but it prevents independent scrutiny of the group’s capital structure, sources of finance and international money flows. Its growing banking interests make that absence of disclosure a matter of public concern.
The group’s relationship with Niels Troost illustrates why scrutiny matters. Materials filed with the US Justice Department’s foreign agents registration unit on 11 April 2024 state that Troost provided more than $70 million to finance Carrinho’s food processing complex in Angola. The filing records a claim about the financing; it is not a finding by US authorities.
Troost, a Dutch commodities trader based in Switzerland, became a major buyer of Russian oil through Paramount and its Dubai affiliate after Russia invaded Ukraine. Investigations and court proceedings suggest these companies traded about $5 billion in Russian crude in 2022 and 2023, allegedly exceeding the G7 price cap in some transactions. He denies wrongdoing and argues that the cap does not apply to his subsidiaries outside the EU. The EU placed him under sanctions in December 2024 and removed him from its list in March 2026.
The issue here is neither an allegation of illegality against Troost nor guilt by association. It is whether Carrinho’s financing has received sufficiently rigorous scrutiny, and whether supervisors can trace the funds behind an expanding banking group.
Angolan rules require financial institutions to establish the origin of funds, assess customers and beneficial owners, and report suspicious transactions. Complex international connections combined with limited public disclosure make those duties harder to assess and enforce.
The Banco Nacional de Angola has prudential powers over capital, concentrated exposures, financial reporting and transactions with related parties. It should use them to impose clear conditions on the deal.
Those conditions should include splitting Carrinho into two autonomous entities, one financial, the other devoted to industry, logistics and commerce. Banks need independent governance and risk controls, with lending decisions insulated from the conglomerate’s financing needs. Independent directors and autonomous risk committees would help make that separation effective.
Approval should also require publication of consolidated accounts audited by internationally recognised firms. These would allow scrutiny of funding sources and flows from risky jurisdictions, and help identify any direct or indirect links to sanctioned entities.
Structural separation and disclosure are prudential safeguards against systemic risk. They would protect competition, depositors and Angola’s standing with international financial partners. Combined with close supervision, they offer a practical response to the risks of concentration and opacity. The central bank’s decision will show whether financial reform is becoming institutional practice or remains a government slogan.