Category: Corruption

Constitutional Breach: Secretary of State Remains Director-General of IGCA

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 […]

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Angola’s U$61.5 Billion Contracts by Presidential Decree. No Public Tender

In Angola, major public spending decisions are often not announced in televised addresses or debated on the floor of Parliament. They appear instead in the Diário da República — formal presidential decrees, written in technical language, authorizing contracts that can reshape entire sectors of the economy. Between 2017 and today, at least US$61.5 billion has been approved through one such mechanism: simplified procurement. That figure emerges from a review of 476 presidential decrees, drawn from more than 500 examined during President João Lourenço’s two terms in office. It is not a complete accounting of all direct awards issued over eight years. It is a documented sample. Yet even as a partial record, it reveals the scale at which executive discretion has operated. Of the 476 decrees analyzed, beneficiaries could be identified in 273 cases. In the remaining 203 — representing 42.6 percent — no beneficiary is publicly named. Those unidentified […]

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Carrinho: The Sanctions Shadow Behind Angola’s Industrial Showcase

Angola’s most celebrated industrial project was financed in part by a trader later sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom. There is no proof of wrongdoing by Carrinho — but the absence of transparency leaves troubling questions unanswered. After examining how public contracts and sovereign guarantees have concentrated economic power in Angola (see the first part of this dossier), this second investigation looks at the international ties of the Carrinho Group — including partnerships with entities linked to sanctions proceedings in Europe — and the due-diligence and transparency questions that follow. Carrinho’s business relationships with several international entities warrant heightened scrutiny, particularly given the lack of publicly available financial information and the complexity of the corporate structures involved. Confirmed links connect Carrinho to Manty AG, based in Switzerland and led by Maurice Taylor, and to Paramount Energy & Commodities, founded by Dutch trader Niels Troost. Manty AG appears […]

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Angola: When the Party Enters the Bank

Angola’s continued placement under enhanced monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force(FATF) has once again exposed deep structural weaknesses in the country’s banking system. More than the existence of laws, what is at stake is Angola’s ability to demonstrate, in practice, an effective separation between political power, bank ownership, and financial supervision. The high concentration of politically exposed persons (PEPs) within the financial system — often concealed through opaque corporate structures — continues to undermine institutional credibility in the eyes of international regulators and partners. When the FATF placed Angola under enhanced monitoring in October 2024, the decision was framed as a technical alert. It led to clear political-institutional and economic consequences: heightened international scrutiny, increased compliance costs for correspondent banking relationships, and a higher perception of country risk. The overlap between political power and the banking system is not new in Angola. Over the years, several financial institutions have […]

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Angola Land Scandal Exposes Deep Institutional Capture

Public land returned to the State in 2020 was quietly diverted inside Angola’s own institutions between 2021 and 2024. The IGCA falsified registries, erased beneficiaries, undervalued the land by 96-fold, and enabled private subdivision among companies linked to senior officials. Angola has once again exposed a truth its government works hard to bury: public assets are not merely mismanaged — they are actively fed into networks of political patronage operating inside the State itself. A new investigation shows how 82.6 hectares of State land on the outskirts of Luanda were quietly diverted to private interests through an internal scheme at the Instituto Geográfico e Cadastral de Angola (IGCA). It is a case that reveals not just corruption, but institutional collapse — the kind that thrives when no one in power expects to be held accountable. The plot originally belonged to União Cervejeira de Angola (ÚNICA), a brewing venture with Portuguese […]

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Nova Cimangola: Angola’s Independence for Sale

In his State of the Nation Address, President João Lourenço proudly declared that Angolans are celebrating “50 years as a sovereign State, 50 years as a free people, masters of their own destiny.” Yet for many Angolans, these words ring hollow. Nova Cimangola — seized by the Angolan State in 2020 after reclaiming the 49% stake formerly held by Isabel dos Santos — should have been a symbol of restored economic sovereignty. Instead, it has become a textbook case of internal neo-colonialism, where Angolan citizens watch their own public enterprise treat them as second-class workers on their own soil. A New Colonial Caste System More than 1,000 Angolan employees receive low wages at Nova Cimangola. Meanwhile, just 70 expatriates are paid over US $13 million annually — more than the total payroll of the entire local workforce. A Portuguese cafeteria manager earns US $8,000 a month — far more than […]

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Felon Appointed as Supreme Court Justice of Angola

The unprecedented appointment of a convicted criminal to the Angolan Supreme Court – in blatant contravention of the law – has sparked a formal complaint to the country’s Attorney-General to trigger a full investigation into the judicial appointment process as well as any improper interference by President João Lourenço. The Honorable Attorney General of the Republic of Angola Subject: Submission concerning the illegal acts perpetrated by the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the President of the Republic of Angola Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan national citizen bearer of ID Number [redacted], residing at [redacted], Luanda, based on the following facts, informs the Attorney General of the Republic that the appointment of Carlos Alberto Cavuquila as Justice of the Supreme Court is illegal, a threat to the constitutional order and rule of law, and, therefore, should be annulled. Cavuquila’s appointment is in clear violation of Article 41, paragraph 1, c) of […]

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All the President’s Friends: Who Audits Angola’s Chief Auditor?

Yet more evidence has reached Maka Angola that the Angolan President’s vow to end corruption has continued to falter. Maka has already revealed at length how Exalgina Gambôa, the head of the Court of Accounts of Angola’s national audit office, had embezzled four million dollars from the court’s organizational budget to purchase luxury furnishings for her home. New information has come to light showing that the court cannot afford to send its accountants around the country to audit government spending in the provinces because their travel budget was spent on luxury flights for the three Gambôa offspring. President João Lourenço’s promise to tackle Angola’s kleptocratic culture of corruption has stuttered for a while. His campaign has so far failed not just on account of his narrow focus on the fortunes of his predecessor’s children but due to his inability to call out officials close to the current leadership for their […]

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Angolan ex-President’s Men Indicted over Chinese Deals

On Friday July 8, coinciding with news of the death of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, it was revealed that two of his closest associates face trial on corruption charges in connection with business deals funded by the Peoples’ Republic of China to purchase Angolan oil and fund post-war reconstruction. Facing multiple criminal charges are two Angolan Generals, Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior (better known by his nom-de-guerre, ‘Kopelipa’), and Leopoldino Fragoso de Nascimento (aka General ‘Dino’) along with co-defendants including Fernando Gomes dos Santos (a lawyer), a Chinese national, You Haming, and three corporate bodies: the China International Fund (CIF) and two companies registered offshore, Plansmart and Utter Right.   The indictment, signed by three prosecutors[1] from the Ministério Público (Office of Public Prosecution) on July 4, runs to 80 pages listing 233 separate clauses detailing the alleged crimes, and citing 36 named witnesses to be called […]

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Audit Court in Leadership Crisis

Following Maka Angola’s report on Audit Court President Exalgina Gambôa’s US$4 million dollar spend on home décor for her government-gifted US$4 million dollar private residence, evidence has emerged of anger and disbelief amid the Audit Court Plenary Advisory Judges who were rushed into approving, without proper scrutiny, the Court’s annual accounts.  The whole process appears to have been crafted to obscure evidence that without due authorization Exalgina Gambôa had far exceeded the amounts for magisterial perquisites permitted by law, and in so doing had committed a crime and brought the Audit Court into disrepute. A scathing letter from Elisa Rangel Nunes, President of the Second Chamber of the Audit Court, dated June 22nd, expresses her dismay that an institution, “defined in the Angolan Constitution as the body that sits at the apex of supervision and control of public spending” has been irredeemably tarnished by its most senior official whose corrupt […]

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