Search Results for: Marta dos Santos

President José Eduardo dos Santos’ Regime is Afraid of Books

A Maka Angola reader has raised a pertinent question concerning the detention on 21 June of 13 activists who were busy discussing methods of peaceful protest against what they consider to be a dictatorship. Two more activists were detained in the following days, and all fifteen were accused of plotting a coup d’etat. Most of these activists are known for their ill-fated attempts to organize anti-government demonstrations, which have been brutally suppressed. But how is it possible, the reader asks, that people who cannot manage even the most basic protest without being violently clamped down and detained, could have the means to organize a coup d’etat? Tired, perhaps, of being the punching bag for the authorities and of being accused by a part of civil society of being disorganized, the young people decided to form a study group. They armed themselves with books on peaceful forms of protest in order […]

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Angola: The Dos Santos family’s private property

President José Eduardo dos Santos has been transferring state resources to the private ownership of his family so openly that there is only one possible conclusion: Angola is the private property of the Dos Santos family. On 19 May 2014, Petroleum Minister José Botelho de Vasconcelos signed Executive Decree no. 159/14, which transferred 10 percent of the shares held by Sonangol P&P (the Research and Production subsidiary of the National Oil Company) in the oil exploration Bloc 4/05 to a company called Prodoil, owned by the president’s youngest sister, Marta dos Santos. The minister did this on the basis of “powers delegated by the President of the Republic …)”. As a result of the transfer, the exploration bloc’s shareholding now comprises Sonangol P&P (40%), Statoil (20%), Somoil (15%), Acrep (15%) e Prodoil (10%). The first time the president gave his sister a gift of oil exploration shares was on 27 October […]

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Isabel dos Santos: Honour and Lies

Within days, Livia Locci, the public prosecutor for the Court of Turin in Italy, will decide on the merits of a complaint of defamation, lodged against three Italian journalists, by Isabel dos Santos, the firstborn daughter of the Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos. As a citizen, Isabel dos Santos is, at all times, entitled to and ought to invoke the universal right to her honour and good name, wherever she is or feels unjustly treated. This right also extends to all citizens of Angola, who, by force of circumstances, have been governed by her father for the past 32 years. The present text deals only with the arguments presented by Isabel dos Santos to the Italian court which have a direct bearing on Angolan citizens, and which could be damaging to the country and the honour of the Angolan people. The Facts On July 15, 2007, the Italian newspaper, […]

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Vincent Miclet’s Angolan (Mis)Adventures

When Le Monde profiled the African-born businessman Vincent Miclet in November 2018, it called him the “Gatsby” of Francophone Africa. The inference was clear: opulence and decadence combined in a single name. Gatsby was the fatally-flawed eponymous character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, whose fabulous wealth was obtained through mysterious, possibly illegal, means and whose machinations led to his downfall. Vincent Miclet (on the main foto) was presented as somewhat exotic: a slick, fifty-something millionaire playboy, born and educated to Baccalaureate level in Africa, his business acumen, in his own words, “self-taught”. In a self-serving interview with Le Monde, Miclet hoped to portray himself as a business genius cheated by Angola’s corrupt Generals. Publication ensured numerous commentators would take a closer look. The French businessman did not respond the questionnaire . This is the first in a series of investigations by Maka Angola. BUDDIES AND BRIBES According to Liberation, Miclet […]

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Angola’s Path to Justice: Prosecuting the Guilty and Recovering the Stolen Billions

The dramatic recent arrests of high-ranking figures linked to former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos has gripped the public. Yet little or nothing has been revealed about the struggle to recover the billions of dollars stolen from the public purse during Dos Santos’s corrupt regime. Extensive whistleblower reports published by Maka Angola have led to numerous investigations and prosecutions across the globe to bring to justice all those who illicitly enriched themselves during the Dos Santos years. But efforts to repatriate the missing billions have been complicated by the tortuous schemes devised by the principals to obscure the money trail. One such example: Back in 2009, an Angolan company named Portmill Investimentos e Telecomunicações S.A. allegedly committed fraud in its acquisition of a majority shareholding in the Banco de Espírito Santo Angola (BESA). BESA was the Angolan subisdiary of one of Portugal’s oldest private banks, the Banco de Espírito […]

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Sonangol on the Brink

Putting the President’s daughter in charge of Angola’s national oil company has been such a ‘good move’ that the company is now reported to be on the brink of bankruptcy. The ‘genius’ businesswoman and her cabal of Portuguese consultants have succeeded only in a level of mismanagement greater than ever before. And so it has come to pass that the state monopoly that controls Angola’s main source of income is now reduced to the role of beggar. Maka Angola is reliably informed that on May 17 Isabel dos Santos went to see the Finance Minister, Archer Mangueira, to request an injection of three billion dollars (!!) to rescue Sonangol from imminent bankruptcy. A source close to the Portuguese consultancy firm which has been the de facto administrator of Sonangol on behalf of Isabel dos Santos, told Maka Angola that the Minister had to inform the President of the Sonangol Board […]

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Oil: A Lesson in Hand-Washing for Daddy’s Girls

Pay attention Ivanka Trump: this is a fun way to ramp up your profits! First you take control of a guaranteed money-maker (or more accurately, your daddy the President hands it to you); then you make sure that you have a majority (or at least hefty) stake in the key partner companies that produce, support or market your products. It’s a no-brainer. All you need is for daddy to win political power and deal you in. This is a true story in a post-truth world. Angola’s first daughter, Isabel dos Santos, is quite peeved that media upstarts dare to question her right (birthright) to have a finger in every succulent pie in Angola’s limited buffet. When accusations of nepotism are aired, when reports document suspicious business dealings, she stamps her pretty foot and sulks: “I am a victim of political intrigue”. Anointed president of the board of the state oil […]

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Incompetence and Corruption Sinks Angola’s Development Bank

Angola’s state-owned banks, businesses and investment funds are all reportedly in trouble: either loss-making or on the brink of bankruptcy. The state oil giant, Sonangol, is floundering amid unpaid debts amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars; the crisis at the Credit and Savings Bank (the BPC, Banco de Poupança e Crédito) has led to a clean sweep of the board; and far from accumulating interest, the Angolan Sovereign Fund is losing hundreds of millions. The common denominator to their misfortunes is – according to the government – the disastrous plunge in oil prices. Not so, say economic analysts in Angolan and beyond. They say the drop in the price of oil simply uncovered factors that would send any business anywhere to the wall. The interruption to the flow of petrodollars made a continued cover-up of endemic corruption and incompetence impossible. All of a sudden their clandestine existence was revealed, […]

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