Category: Corruption

José Leiria chaired Angola’s General Tax Administration (AGT) until 8 September 2026, when he was appointed secretary of state for tax affairs. Finance Minister Vera Daves has since appointed Bráulio Assis, AGT’s former communications chief, to head Leiria’s office. Both men feature in Maka Angola’s investigations into the authority’s dealings with In Pressionante Kianda. Earlier reporting showed how the company helped shape the tender it went on to win. Messages attributed to Assis indicate that he advised the bidder while chairing its evaluation committee. Their advancement gives Angolans further reason to fear state capture, with officials whose conduct demands scrutiny gaining greater authority. In a country where millions of children go hungry and have no access to school, even a cloud of sugar can provide a way to extract public money. Cotton candy, made mostly of air and sugar, looks more substantial than it is. In AGT’s business dealings, that […]

Angola’s Tax Authority (AGT) has awarded Portuguese academic Carla Trindade two consultancy contracts worth a combined 551 million kwanzas to help investigate tax offences. Yet documents reviewed by Maka Angola point to irregularities in dealings between her husband’s company and the same authority. She and her husband are also named in a criminal complaint formally lodged with prosecutors alleging money laundering, tax evasion and other offences. Trindade teaches tax law, tax litigation and arbitration at the Portuguese Catholic University’s Lisbon School of Law, where she coordinates the postgraduate programme in tax litigation and a short course on crime and taxation. She also teaches economic and business law at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics, and taxation on the master’s programme in business law at the Catholic University of Angola. She is entitled to the presumption of innocence. The central question is why the AGT hired her to help investigate […]

The tender was publicly announced on 15 November 2023. In Pressionante Kianda, however, had only two workers with active registrations at the National Social Security Institute — and had to submit 20 technical profiles. Messages attributed to Bráulio Assis, chair of the tender evaluation committee, appear to show him providing advance information, suggesting responses and giving his “OK” to the company that would go on to win. In Part I of this investigation, Maka Angola reported that Carla Trindade received tender documents before the announcement, discussed changes with AGT officials and wrote to the shareholders: “We were the ones who drafted the tender rules.” After the formal launch, that proximity continued as the bid was assembled and assessed. Twenty Profiles and Two Registered Employees The revised tender documents allowed bidders to draw on external resources. Even so, messages from 28 November show Kianda scrambling to assemble the minimum 20 profiles. […]

When Angola’s General Tax Administration (AGT) announced a billion kwanza (US$1.2 million) tender for its communications plan on 15 November 2023, one of the eventual bidders had already seen the tender documents, proposed changes to the requirements and received the final version from the tax authority itself two days before publication. In Pressionante Kianda won. Messages, drafts and successive versions of the documents show that the bidder did more than compete. It helped shape the tender before it was opened to the public. Nearly five months before the notice was published, Carla Marisa Castelo Trindade Martins told the shareholders that “everything is in place for us to win the tender”. The statement appears in her own written account of a meeting with José Vieira Nuno Leiria (main photo), then chairman of AGT’s board. President João Lourenço underscored his confidence in Leiria by swearing him in on 10 September 2026 as […]

On 3 March 2026, four months after assuming office as Secretary of State, Conceição Cristóvão convened IGCA employees to a meeting scheduled for 6 March to discuss the institute’s internal functioning — signing the notice in his capacity as Director-General. Today, 6 March, he has presided over that meeting. Similarly, Adilson Freire, who serves as head of the IGCA Director’s Support Department, combines these duties with those of chief of staff to the Secretary of State for Urbanism and Housing. Symptomatically, Adilson Freire took office as chief of staff to the Secretary of State in a private ceremony, without this information being posted on the Ministry’s website. Since 30 October 2025, Conceição Luís Cristóvão has served as Secretary of State for Urbanism and Housing. Under the Angolan Constitution and the legal framework governing public administration, appointment to this office makes it incompatible for him to continue exercising the functions of Director-General […]