Category: Corruption

Blood Diamonds: Letter to President Dos Santos

Human rights defender Rafael Marques de Morais sent a letter to president Dos Santos, in his capacity as the highest magistrate in the country, on February 15, urging him to take action on human rights abuses. In the letter, the author denounced the failure of the Attorney General’s office in investigating cases of assassination and torture in the diamond-rich provinces of Lundas, in northeastern Angola. The Office of the Attorney General is, by law, a branch of the Presidency. Last November, the attorney general’s office notified Rafael Marques de Morais that it had shelved the criminal complaint he had lodged a year earlier against nine generals, after a preliminary hearing. As body of evidence, Rafael Marques de Morais filed his book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola, published in Portugal in 2011. The book detailed cases involving the murder of more than 100 people, and more than 500 tortured. […]

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Goats Tethering at Sonangol

For Christmas gifts to its board of directors, the National Oil Company Sonangol allocated a total budget of US $2.2 million. Watches, luggage and other extravagant accessories by luxury brands such as Cartier, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, among others, were part of the range of gifts that the seven executive and four non-executive board members had at their disposal. These gifts were to be exchanged between them, and to be used to reward selected members of the government. Besides the CEO of Sonangol, Francisco de Lemos José Maria, the other executive directors are Anabela de Brito Fonseca, Baptista Sumbe, Fernando Roberto, Sebastião Gaspar Martins, Mateus Morais de Brito and Raquel David Vunge. The non-executive directors are Albina Assis Africano, André Lello, José Gime and José Paiva. When all is added up, each director had US $250,000 to spend on luxury goods. Local analysts welcomed the appointment of Francisco de […]

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From the President to his Family: The Drainage Ditch

By Alfredo Muvuma Years ago, a high-ranking MPLA politburo member praised the business acumen of President José Eduardo’s children. More recently, the state-owned and only daily newspaper Jornal de Angola awarded Isabel dos Santos the title of entrepreneur of the year for 2012. In both cases, the objective was to sell the notion that there is a genuine business talent, within the Dos Santos’s family, to accumulate vast wealth. Forbes places Isabel dos Santos as the first Africa’s woman billionaire, which it estimates as the value of her legitimate shares in UNITEL, BIC Bank and in Portugal. Meanwhile, the State Budget Bill for 2013, passed days ago by the National Assembly, uncovers the farce: there is no mystery behind the enrichment of the Dos Santos clan and its entourage. Article 11 of the bill explains, in part, how the Angolan president and his cronies accumulate fortunes without sweating, much less […]

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A Record Budget for the Presidency, the Military and the Spooks

Angola’s 2013 budget has been hailed by government propaganda as its greatest ever, owing to how much is being spent on social sectors and in the fight against poverty. The State Budget Bill, approved by the National Assembly on January 15, is expected to become law on February 14. Spending this year is up some 50 percent from 2012, taking the overall budget to a record high of AKZ 6.6 trillion (around US $ 69 billion). In fact, 33.5 percent, over one third of the budget, is allocated for the “social sector,” which includes health, education, housing, environment, and social protection.  It is also true that more is being spent on the “social sector” than ever before. But the headline numbers are misleading. Moreover, focusing on the figures fails to notice that, in essence, the State Budget Bill legalizes in fact presidential unaccountability in the management of the public resources. […]

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Top Police Chief Sells Guns in Angola

The Commander-General of the National Police, Commissioner Ambrósio de Lemos Freire dos Santos, may soon become one of the largest private arms dealers in Sub-Saharan Africa. At stake is the importation of 95,000 arms from Brazil, including sub-machine guns, pistols, revolvers and riot control equipment destined for the National Police. The Commissioner’s company, R & AB, has been brokering the deal with the Brazilian manufacturer Taurus, since 2009. In August 2009, as an urgent need arose, Taurus sold 2,600 pistols to the Angolan National Police at a total price of US $825,000. However, R & AB overcharged the National Police for the consignment of the pistols, which included the models PT917 and PT909 (9mm calibre) handguns. Acting as Taurus’s representative for Southern Africa, R & AB presented the buyer, i.e. the Commander of the National Police, Commissioner Ambrósio de Lemos Freire dos Santos, with an invoice in the value of […]

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Trafigura and the Angolan Presidential Mafia

In two years of operations in Angola, Pumangol has become a leading player in the marketing of Angolan oil, as well as in the distribution of oil products in the country. This company is a joint venture between multinational Puma Energy, a subsidiary of Swiss based company Trafigura, and its Angolan counterpart Cochan. In August 2010, President José Eduardo dos Santos authorized a total of five investment contracts worth US$ 931 million, by multinational Puma Energy and its Angolan partner Cochan. In  a country ranked among the 15 worst in the world to do business, the rapid success of Trafigura and its subsidiary Pumangol  is, by its own right, a case study and one for an in-depth investigation into its dealings with the presidential inner circle. The Geneva-based company benefits of a swap contract with Sonangol. Trafigura receives Angolan crude oil (in unknown quantities) in exchange for delivering all petroleum […]

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Water for Chevron and a Lesson for the Government

A U.S oil multinational, Chevron, recently kick-started a new venture in Luanda’s most affluent residential area, Talatona:  a water well for the consumption of its employees. The first well for the rich, privileged and expats, in a luxury gated community, is about to pump water to the 100 houses of Condomínio Monte Belo (Beautiful Heights), where most of Chevron’s expat employees live.  Since the August 31 elections, the Angolan capital, Luanda, a sprawling urban chaos with more than five million people, has been plagued by severe water and electricity shortages. Monte Belo is one of the extravagantly expensive gated communities that have mushroomed south of Luanda and it is worth over US $250 million. Chevron commissioned the real estate project to the Brazilian construction multinational Odebrecht, in a joint-venture with a local private company Sakus Empreendimentos e Participações, set up by Sonangol oil executives. Sakus is currently fronted by Mirco […]

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Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund – the US $5 billion logo

The Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund (FSDEA) was launched in October to great fanfare, receiving global media coverage from the likes of the New York Times, CNN and Euromoney. Local and international journalists packed into the shiny new offices by Sagrada Família upmarket area in Luanda to admire the glass and steel spiral staircase, lacquered furniture and raw silk wallpaper. They were given stylish press packs featuring black and white photographs of smiling Angolan children and told how the FSDEA would change Angola for the better and preserve the country’s great oil wealth for the use of future generations. After a lavish lunch buffet complete with drinks served by a suited barman, there was a film shown by a South African production team who had collated clips of “ordinary” Angolans saying how much they loved their country, and a mumbled speech and Powerpoint presentation from Board Chairman Armando Manuel. In the […]

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Presidential Guards’ Trial to Resume

The trial of 15 soldiers of the Angola’s Presidential Guard will resume in the Luanda Regional Military Tribunal on Friday, September 28. The members of the Central Protection and Security Unit (DCPS) in the Military Bureau of the Angolan Presidency are accused of the crime of making “demands in a group”, for claiming fair wages and better working conditions. During the September 21 hearing, the judge heard three witnesses to try to establish whether the accused had made group demands in an unruly or riotous manner, as they are accused of doing. The witnesses confirmed only that the soldiers had delivered a petition without any provocative or aggressive behaviour. At an earlier session on September 18, the military judge suspended the session in order to assess whether the law in terms of which the men were accused was in line with the Angolan Constitution. The Law on Military Crimes of […]

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The Presiding Judge’s Quixotic Dealings

Later this week, Angola’s Constitutional Court will rule on a challenge brought by opposition parties against the National Electoral Commission, claiming widespread malpractice in the conduct of the national elections held on August 31. As background to the forthcoming judgement, Maka Angola here recalls how the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Rui Ferreira, has conducted his own business affairs. The deal in question involved the purchase of a building that houses an upmarket Luanda nightclub, Dom Quixote. In 2007, Ferreira purchased the building on behalf of his business partner António Lisboa Santos, with an agreement that Santos would acquire the building from Ferreira after paying off the debt over a period of four years. Ferreira is now claiming that Santos pays him around $5 million, almost ten times the building’s purchasing price. Of this sum, US$2.2 million comprises interest charged at 75 percent on the purchase price of the […]

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