Category: Corruption

Chevron’s Misplaced Endorsement of Nepotism in Angola

What must Chevron’s CEO John Watson be thinking as he sits in his office in San Ramon, California and ponders the future of his Angolan subsidiary, the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Ltd (Cabgoc)? How much longer does he estimate that he needs to keep on the good side of José Eduardo dos Santos’s corrupt and kleptocratic MPLA government to ensure Cabgoc can continue to operate?  Is he hedging his bets?  Or is he staking Chevron’s African corporate future on the faint chance that the Dos Santos family and their acolytes will not be brought to justice for their crimes? While oil industry analysts around the globe were divided about the merit of the President’s nepotistic appointment of his daughter Isabel to head the restructured Angolan state oil company, Sonangol,  Watson’s man in Angola, the Cabgoc director John Baltz, was telling a US-Angola Chamber of Commerce conference that he was “optimistic” […]

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Angola Yellow Fever Funds Pay For Refuse Collection

Why was a sum of nearly US $200,000, allocated to fight the yellow fever epidemic in the Angolan oil-rich province of Cabinda, used instead to pay off a debt to a private refuse collection service? That’s the question being asked by confused Health Ministry officials in the capital, Luanda, after they were left dumbfounded by news from Cabinda that the special funds allocated to yellow fever were instead diverted by the newly-appointed city administrator to pay arrears. According to a source in the Provincial Government of Cabinda, this was one of the first steps taken by Arnaldo Tomás Puaty, who was only appointed to the position of municipal administrator on May 6 after previously working as an adviser to Cabinda’s Provincial Governor, Aldina da Lomba Catembo.  It’s only two months since the provincial governor announced a new household and business tax would be levied to help pay for refuse collection. […]

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Supersonic Nepotism: Illegalities at the Speed of Light

Angola’s President, José Eduardo dos Santos, has just appointed his daughter Isabel dos Santos as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the state oil giant, Sonangol.  He had already appointed her half-brother, José Filomeno dos Santos, back in 2012 as Chairman of the Board of the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund.  This means that the country’s sovereign fund and the state’s main source of income are now both in the hands of children of the President. In plain English, this is the very dictionary definition of nepotism: ‘the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them top jobs’.  No doubt there will be many analyses and critiques of Angola’s particular brand of nepotism but from the strictly legal point of view there is one indisputable conclusion to be drawn:  President dos Santos’s actions are unconstitutional and illegal. Unconstitutional and illegal The Angolan […]

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Isabel dos Santos in Sonangol: Fox Put in Charge of the Henhouse

It doesn’t get any more blatant than this.  One of Africa’s worst kleptocrats (according to Forbes Magazine and Transparency International amongst others) demonstrates his unshakeable assurance that he does not expect to be called to account. No lessons learnt here from the trial of Hissene Habre. Barely a week after reports emerged that the ‘billionaire’ daughter of Angola’s President of 37 years (and counting) only amassed her fortune in stock acquisition thanks to a nifty diversion of funds from the state-owned oil company Sonangol, who does President José Eduardo dos Santos name to head the Angolan oil giant?  None other than his favoured heiress, Isabel.   Should Angola now expect Isabel to repay Sonangol the seed money funnelled through front companies Exem Africa and Esperaza Holdings for her shares in the Portuguese oil and gas company GALP?    Or is it more likely that she will organize a massive cover […]

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Just Call Him “General Toyota”

Maka Angola has learned that some 300 motor vehicles imported into Angola in 2008 for the use of officers serving in the Military Intelligence and Security Service, have instead been retained in a parking lot at the Morro Bento quarters in Luanda. Sources within Military Intelligence told Maka Angola that the vehicles, which include Toyota Land Cruiser, Hilux and Yaris models, were imported at a total cost of US $7  million to the public purse.  But they have yet to be distributed to their intended recipients, in spite of repeated complaints to the office of the President of the Republic. The sources allege that the head of the Military Intelligence and Security Service, General Zé Maria, has kept the vehicles as a private fleet: “Several of the vehicles have been diverted quite openly to the General’s family and friends.  It’s a blatant abuse of power, and it is jeopardizing vital […]

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Isabel dos Santos: Africa’s Richest Woman and the Lie of Her Assets

When Isabel dos Santos sits down to count her billions, as Africa’s richest woman, much of that fortune is in stocks and shares which she counts as her own. Forbes estimates her wealth at US $3.3 billion. The reality, however, is that a large proportion (almost two thirds of her fortune) estimated at 1.6 billion Euros (US $1.8 billion) according to the Diário Economico’s calculations, corresponds to stocks in the Portuguese oil and gas company, Galp, which legally belong to the Angolan National Oil Company, Sonangol. President José Eduardo dos Santos’s daughter told the Wall Street Journal last February: “I’m not financed by any state money or any public funds.” She insisted “I don’t do that.” Ever since the announcement that she had become a billionaire, Isabel has done her utmost to justify her fortune as “clean”, the result of entrepreneurial expertise which began with her selling eggs at the […]

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Angola and the British Spinning Wheel

When Africa’s richest woman is the daughter of the President of an oil-rich nation who has clung to power for nearly four decades, it’s not surprising that people might entertain the suspicion that her success could be due to factors over and beyond any particular business expertise. We imagine that empire-building must go so much more smoothly if one has unlimited funds (allegedly from the continual diversion of state funds into daddy’s secret bank accounts), the near-certainty that any bids for state contracts will trump all the competition, and a growing national and international network of complicit politicians, financiers, directors, business advisors, managers, and consultants to create an intricate, complex and almost-indecipherable network of corporations, shell companies and cartels to make it harder to follow the money trail. Enter Isabel dos Santos, the eldest child of the Angolan leader, who is understandably keen to recast herself as the internationally-recognized, award-winning […]

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Portuguese Vested Interests Trump Human Rights in Angola

The three Portuguese political parties who formed an unholy alliance to vote down a parliamentary motion which would have censured Angola over the imprisonment of 17 dissidents in the ‘Luanda Book Club’ trial, have attempted to justify their action. The Christian Democrat leader of the CDS (Centro Democrático e Social-Partido Popular), Paulo Portas, has invoked what he says is official party policy requiring them “to remain silent regarding active judicial processes (…) whether in Portugal or abroad”.   Similarly, a statement from the centrist PSD (Partido Social Democrata) says it was upholding “the principle of respect for judicial decisions”.  Conveniently they choose to ignore solid evidence that judicial process in Angola routinely fails to respect its own constitutional and legal dictates, acting instead in defence of the powerful. Apparently, the CDS and PSD party policy permits silence, complicity or shameless opportunism as convenient. Meanwhile on the far left, the communist PCP […]

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Angola’s House of Cards

Angola’s Vice-President, Manuel Vicente, is reportedly under investigation in Portugal over allegations that he bribed a Portuguese public prosecutor, Orlando Figueira, to put an end to scrutiny of his murky affairs in the country. Oddly, the Angolan authorities have been silent about this affair. This is a noteworthy change of tactics. After all, this is Portugal, where Manuel Vicente has been lauded as a world-class leader and manager while he helped enrich any number of opportunists and carpetbaggers.  Equally, there seems to be no sudden rush to “protect Portuguese interests in Angola”.  This is odd.  Has he been hung out to dry? It appears that Manuel Vicente placed too much trust in the invincibility of José Eduardo dos Santos. Above all, he trusted in the impunity assured by the Angolan president to those loyal to him as they too were granted a role in the pillaging.  Did he overstep?  It’s […]

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The Road to Dialogue or Things Fall Apart in Angola

Last Friday, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution paving the way for Angola to be promoted from a low to middle income country by 2020. This resolution is cause for celebration by the government, for it is an international endorsement of its stewardship of the country. From 2003 to 2013, the country’s oil revenues reached over US $450 billion, according to Angolan economic estimates, and for a decade it ranked among the ten fastest growing economies in the world. Meanwhile, the timing of the UN resolution seems to be a twist of irony for ordinary Angolan citizens. It comes at a time when the bust of the oil fueled economic boom is all too evident on the supermarket shelves, and poverty is on the rise. Food shortages are becoming severe in parts of the country, while in the capital retailers are imposing rationing of certain products. […]

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