Are you suffering from corruption fatigue?
Yes, it gets to us all. There is just so much of it. Everywhere.

Shameless, unethical, immoral, illegal, self-serving behavior is rampant.
From the USA to North Korea, it seems few countries are immune to the self-enriching predations of the “one-percenters”.

So how should we react to the news that the jobless, student, twenty-something year-old child of an ageing African dictator threw down €500,000 on a charity bid just so he could be photographed alongside some Hollywood stars like Will Smith?

Before you yawn and turn the page, consider this. While this pampered princeling was quaffing champagne at the AMFAR gala in Cannes, dozens of his fellow countrymen of all ages were dying unnecessarily for lack of the most basic medicine and medical equipment. That’s because his country’s oil wealth has been siphoned off year after year, leaving little in the state budget for the necessities of life for the vast majority of the population.

Meet Eduane Danilo dos Santos, known as Danilo. He’s one of the many (at least nine) children fathered with different women by José Eduardo dos Santos, who as President of Angola for the past 37 years has amassed a fortune estimated at billions of dollars, while failing to ensure the most basic services are provided in the country he ‘stewards’.

Danilo is the eldest of the four children of the marriage of President dos Santos to Ana Paula, who in a spectacular career move, was promoted from flight attendant on the presidential private jet to first lady of Angola. She and her children want for nothing while more than 24 million Angolans live below the poverty line.

Still, half a million euros for Aids research is money for a good cause, no? And what did Danilo get in return? Initial reports said his winning bid scored an exceptionally ugly watch. One day later, in response to the outcry, Danilo apologized and said the bid was not for the watch but for a series of pictures (actually photographs) by George Hurrell for the use of his own (previously-unknown) charity named “Espirito de Crianca” (Spirit of the Child).

Danilo appears to think that the acquisition of a series of photographs for the sum of 500,000 euros is somehow justifiable, because of his shared commitment to promoting art and culture along with finding a cure for HIV/AIDS.

This level of hubris is staggering. But then his father’s political party still stakes its reputation on achieving an end to the Angolan civil war in 2002. And after 15 years in which the MPLA elite got richer while the country got poorer, their current election campaigners have the cheek to go on state television and announce that there are “intangible benefits” to having the MPLA in power, such as “the oxygen we breathe, which is also a benefit of peace”.

Did you think Nigeria epitomized the worst of African corruption? Or Equatorial Guinea? Think again. Of all the African nation states, only Guinea Bissau (168) and Libya (in last place at 170) score worse than Angola (164) on Transparency International’s Corruption Index.

Consider, also, that Danilo was splashing the cash and celebrating while his own father was believed to be receiving medical treatment just 600 kilometers along the Mediterranean coast.

It’s true that the recent state of President Dos Santos’s health has been a closely-guarded secret. When Maka Angola reported that a sudden medical emergency had required the President to be whisked to a private hospital in Barcelona, on May 1, the President’s eldest daughter (and self-described African billionaire) Isabel dos Santos threw a tantrum on social media. She accused Maka Angola of a lack of consideration for the feelings of his family, stating (wrongly) that the report suggested he had already died. It hadn’t. Dos Santos returned to Angola yesterday, and seemingly recovered from his illness.

But Danilo must surely be in the know. After all his mother Ana Paula was at his father’s side when he was flown out of Angola.

How would young Eduane Danilo have access to 500,000 euros? At nearly 26 years old he is still a student and has yet to forge a career of his own.

However, he is (naturally) a beneficiary of his family’s immensely wealthy holdings. It’s said his teenage allowance was a hefty US $20,000 per month.

Along with his mother, Ana Paula dos Santos, he is a partner in a newly-created Angolan financial institution named the ‘Banco Postal’. In common with his younger siblings, he holds stock in a private holding company called ‘Deana Day Spa’ in which his mother is the majority shareholder. And, in spite of having no relevant experience, he was entrusted with the privatization of Angola Telecom.

He also shares with his mother a penchant for big gala events. Ana Paula is notorious in Angola for having taken charge of the ‘Miss Angola’ event as part of the ‘Miss Universe’ pageant. She is equally well known for having emptied the coffers of successive Angolan embassies in countries hosting the Miss Universe pageant to fund her entourage’s luxury stays and shopping expeditions.

The pattern of behavior of the Dos Santos family and all their hangers-on has been to siphon off state funds for their own use whenever they want. To them it is clearly irrelevant that children are routinely dying in Angola’s under-funded hospitals for lack of syringes or medicines. They see no need to concern themselves that there is widespread hunger and poverty. In the style of the Roman Emperor Nero, they will continue to play while their country goes to hell on a handcart. And they hope the rest of us are too fatigued to do anything but clap politely and let them get on with it.

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 that the State does not have the financial wherewithal to rescue her.

The future for Sonangol, then, looks bleak.

From the moment her father appointed her to head Sonangol, Isabel dos Santos has encountered repeated difficulty in obtaining credit from the international financial markets given the conflicts of interest between her private business interests and those of the Angolan state.

International financiers are said to believe that her brand is now “toxic”.

The Portuguese consultants have been told that the Finance Minister suggested to Isabel dos Santos that she should ask her father, the President, for the money. In return, the presidential daughter is said to have threatened the Minister with “consequences” for having denied her bailout request. Her threats apparently left the minister completely unmoved. The Portuguese consultants believe Isabel’s star is waning and say they expect their lucrative stay in the Angolan capital is likely to be at an end, very soon.

The powers available to the President mean that José Eduardo dos Santos could have recourse to the State reserves to bail out his daughter and rescue her reputation as a businesswoman.

However, President Dos Santos has only just returned to Angola from a month-long stay in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, where he was reportedly undergoing medical treatment.

Officially, Angola says there is nothing wrong with their leader’s health. But sources close to the first family let slip some time ago that the President was suffering from prostate cancer. A known complication of late-stage prostate cancer is a tendency to suffer strokes or trans-ischaemic attacks and there is widespread speculation in Angola that this was the reason for the emergency flight to Spain at the beginning of the month, accompanied by his wife and personal physician among others.

The ruling party is desperate to maintain the façade of normality ahead of presidential elections in August which promise a peaceful transition of power after 37 years.

In his final months at the helm, will Dos Santos carry the same clout? Archer Mangueira’s predecessor as Finance Minister, Armando Manuel, was reportedly fired because he was disinclined to release funds requested by his erstwhile friend and mentor, the President’s son José Filomeno dos Santos, who recommended him for the position in the first place. Can Archer Mangueira now expect summary dismissal for turning down Isabel’s bailout request?

Or could it turn the other way? Because the power brokers at the MPLA are increasingly worried about Isabel’s mismanagement of Sonangol, which has been the sole cash cow of the Angolan economy.

Amongst their concerns is a formal complaint from leading members of the ruling party (*see note below) that Isabel cancelled the 2015 tendering process for onshore oil exploration blocks for which they were engaged in the bidding.

The injured parties are demanding US $80 million in compensation, allegedly for the financial losses caused to those taking part in the bidding process.

Isabel had tried to pass the buck, claiming Sonangol’s Chairman of the Executive Committee, Paulino Jerónimo, was responsible as he had signed the order to cancel the tenders. The ruse was not successful.

Maka Angola has learned from a source in the MPLA that the party leadership summoned Isabel dos Santos to party headquarters to explain herself and was met with a point-bank refusal from the presidential daughter. They followed up, just two weeks ago, with a demand that the Sonangol Board give an explanation. But the Board members also declined to do so, saying they did not have Isabel dos Santos’ authorization.

The bidding process for the new oil exploration blocks was supposed to offer a preferential opportunity for Angolan companies. Yet, aside from the MPLA elite, Isabel dos Santos herself and other family members were among the long list of beneficiaries.

In a blatant conflict of interest, Isabel’s private company Isoil, in partnership with the state company Sonangol Exploration and Production (Sonangol Pesquisa & Produção) where she is CEO, was to have been allocated Blocks KON 9 and KON 17 of the Kwanza Basin.

One of the ruling party slogans for the past election is this: “Angola a crescer mais, a distribuir melhor” (More Growth and Better Distribution for Angola). Perhaps they should clarify that the growth and distribution are intended for the presidential family and the ruling MPLA… and no-one else.
Companies affected by the cancellation of the bidding process include:

(1) Somoil operators (Congo Basin, COM 1) counts Secretary of State for Oil, Aníbal Silva, among the shareholders;
(2) Simples Oil (Kwanza Basin, KON 6), whose nominal head is Alberto Jorge de Jesus Mendes, who is the coordinator of the Angolan Forum of Young Entrepreneurs (Fórum Angolano de Jovens Empreendedores, FAJE), a member of the National Committee of the MPLA Youth (JMPLA) and the son of Isalino Mendes, an MPLA veteran;
(3) Sunshine (Congo Basin, COM 6 and Kwanza Basin, KON 5) is controlled by Muadi Efani, the son of the former Oil Minister, Desidério Costa; (4) Soconinfa (Kwanza Basin, KON 17) has Ginga Isabel Neto Costa e Almeida, Desidério Costa’s daughter as one of its shareholders;
(5) Poliedro (Congo Basin, COM 6) is connected to MPLA Political Bureau members Roberto de Almeida and Bornito de Sousa (who is also the MPLA’s candidate for Vice-President);
(6) Group Gema (Kwanza Basin, Kon 8 and Kon 19) has another two MPLA Political Bureau members on its board: Pitra Neto and Carlos Feijó.
(7) Servicab and Prodoil (Congo Basin, CON 1) are connected to the President’s sister (and Isabel’s Aunt) Marta dos Santos “Mana Marta” who entered into partnership with her niece. Mana Marta also has an interest in Prodiam.

Angola’s gravy train has been rumbling along one set of tracks for the past 37 years, with all-encompassing corruption tainting the ruling MPLA party under President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Those at the apex of the pyramid have diverted billions of dollars from the economy to their own bank accounts, while ensuring the loyalty of those beneath them by dispensing cash, goods and favors as needed.

With just over two months to go to the presidential election that will see a change of leadership, members of the National Assembly (Angola’s parliament) are being given a sign that it will be ‘business as usual’.

The National Assembly is chaired by veteran MPLA politburo member, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos “Nandó”. Nandó is a rather sinister character with a smile likened to that of a cat which has just devoured its prey.

His official job titles (police chief, Interior Minister, Prime Minister, Vice-President, National Assembly Chair) belie his principal role as a guardian of internal security who has overseen many a crackdown on anyone who dared to dissent from the official MPLA line.

His public image as an enforcer has to some degree allowed him to survive the various corruption scandals that have enveloped the president’s administration…. Until now. For it turns out that he authorized the purchase of 250 luxury Lexus LX 570 cars worth some no less than US $78 million, to be awarded as “gifts” to all those politicians who manage to get themselves elected to the Assembly come August.

According to industry reviews, this clunky 8-seater Lexus SUV is somewhat overpriced. “It’s smooth, upscale, and imposing, but the LX’s heavy steering, dismal braking, and questionable towing capability are trade-offs its rivals don’t force you to make.” The base model starts at more than US $90,000 – but somehow all the add-ons (no doubt including the ‘fees’ for the middlemen) mean the versions for Angola’s members of parliament are costing the country a staggering US $312,000 apiece.

How do we know this? Well Nandó signed the National Assembly Order Nº 3/17 on April 25 (coincidentally, a date of no small significance as it is the anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution that led to Angolan independence). And his order was published in the official Daily Gazette (Diário da República) on May 22.

The chair of the National Assembly, Fernando dos Santos “Nandó”.

The justification is that his office considers that Angolan MPs need “dignity”. Apparently his office doesn’t believe that dignity accrues from MPs honorably doing their job which is to serve the Angolan people, but from the show of vanity of driving around in luxury vehicles… the modern-day equivalent of the Bourbons riding around in gilded carriages, scented squares pressed to their noses, declaiming “Let them eat cake”, while their downtrodden subjects starve.

This at a time when Angola faces the most severe economic crisis in its history. As ever, the most vulnerable are the ones who suffer the most. Angola’s public health system is in complete disarray, with hospitals unable to function as anything other than Death’s waiting room for lack of the most basic medicines and equipment. No aspirin, no anti-malarials, no syringes even.

The Health Ministry blames budget cuts. And yet these budget cuts somehow don’t affect this multi-million-dollar car-buying spree.

Given that the MPLA government has already done its best to pre-rig the election in its favor (taking charge of the electoral roll, making arrangements for votes to be “carried by police” to the central count rather than transmitted electronically, and so on), the beneficiaries will, in the main, be those loyal camp followers who serve as an echo chamber to the robber barons that lead the party.

It gives little hope that anything might change if the MPLA achieves its objective of re-election, instead reinforcing the old story that the peoples’ political representatives have to be corrupt (or corruptible) from the get go. Note too the blatant conflict of interest: Nandó benefits from his own directive, as his name is no. 3 on the MPLA candidate list.

What hope then for a democratic Angola based on moral integrity, honesty and ethical behavior? Not one elected member of the opposition has raised their voice to refuse such a “gift” if elected again. Not even UNITA, which has tried over the years to reinvent itself from the party of death, to a party that stands against the thievery of the MPLA.

You’d think the UNITA, CASA-CE, FNLA and PRS candidates would have the good sense to make a loud public rejection of this blatant bribe. But no. Not even for the PR value. Because they too are unable to resist the lure every five years of a gleaming new chariot that sets them apart from the people they are supposed to represent.

So are they any better than their MPLA opposite numbers? When every single member of the assembly behaves like a paid jester, it appears the opposition just wear different stage make-up.

Reports of bizarre behavior by the Angolan President’s loyal henchman, General José António Maria, aged 74, have become so frequent that people are openly questioning whether the elderly security head honcho is succumbing to senility.

Already past the official retirement age, the man better known as General “Zé Maria” remains the head of the Military Intelligence and Security Service (Serviço de Inteligência e Segurança Militar, SISM) despite the concerns for his mental health.

Once again his unprofessional behavior towards female employees is causing a stir in Luanda. The General is a notorious womanizer, who propositions almost every woman he encounters. When it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace, he appears to ignore both Angolan laws and the passage of time. Have none of his senior colleagues thought to whisper in his ear that this is the 21st Century and ‘droit de seigneur’ is past its sell-by date?

The latest victims of the General’s whims contacted Maka Angola with their accounts.

Helena and Núria

Helena, aged 22, found a job with SISM’s Transport Department in 2015 and had worked there without any problems, until she was transferred to the SISM HQ in Cidade Alta, Luanda, this year (where her younger sister Núria had recently found work).

Núria, aged 19, a nursing student unfortunately caught the eye of General Zé Maria, who began to pay her more attention than any lowly employee should ever expect from the top brass. He seemed to be singling her out and the more she tried to avoid him, the more fault he found with her.

She complained to Helena, who advised her not to put up with his treatment. As the stress caused by his behavior became overwhelming, Núria decided to leave, giving as her reason the imminent internship stage of her nursing studies. Any reasonable person might assume that leaving the job would put an end to the harassment. But apparently the head of military intelligence and security could not let the matter lie.

“The boss apparently thought that she was lying to him and he sent officers to investigate at the nursing school”, says the older sister.

The officers demanded documents from the college secretary regarding Núria’s internship. General Zé Maria then tried to convince her to stay, offering to “help her out” by paying for a computer, Ipad and text books. Núria politely declined, fearing she would be compromised by accepting his offer.

Afterwards, General Zé Maria made a public fuss after the Labor Day ceremony on May 1st, demanding that all the workers join him for a bite to eat. Núria had already left for college and he singled her out by name, demanding to know why she wasn’t there and accusing her of a lack of respect for leaving “without saying goodbye to me”. He then sent officers to the college to verify that she was indeed there.

As Helena says, “Núria is very young still and it made her cry and she swore not to return to work. I also thought that was for the best. But then the General began to telephone me, threatening me that if my sister didn’t return to work, it would end up in court. So I advised her to go back and write a formal letter of resignation, even though neither of us had an official work contract from the start.”

The next day Helena reported for work as usual when she found herself surrounded by three Lieutenant Colonels (Eurico Manuel, João Paulo and Manuel Quinglês) who berated her over her sister’s resignation and told her she was being fired for giving Núria “wrong advice”.

“They told me that General Zé Maria was very annoyed with me for not giving my sister better advice and that he didn’t like people who caused ‘disorder’ and didn’t want ‘troublemakers’ working for him”, says Helena.

“I was questioned by the General’s aides, they told me I could lose my job, but then they came back and said I could keep my job on one condition: I had to bring my sister to work with me.”

Perplexed, Helena then started to receive anonymous telephone calls demanding that she bring her sister to work. She says she refused. On the following Sunday, the “Chief” rang her in person to ask if she wasn’t coming back to work. On the Monday, she received a call threatening her with legal proceedings and court questioning.

“I said that was ok, that I wasn’t afraid, and I was prepared to answer any questions in court. I am no fool. Others have been unjustly sacked too, including Telma, who lost her job over a banana peel.”

She was instructed to go into work to sign a letter of resignation and refused because she had never been issued a contract of employment. She says, I handed over my pass to the Sergeant at the sentry gate because the office of the secretary was closed already.”

Two days later, the same Sergeant appeared at her front door at 5h00 am, with orders to take her back to write a letter of resignation, and to hand a document for her to sign, which General Zé Maria allegedly drafted himself. The document was for Helena to self-incriminate herself as “crazy, unworthy of working, ungrateful, and ill-prepared to be among people, and capable of causing them harm.”

Though neither woman now works for the General, both continue to be harassed and threatened. In addition to being told they would face legal proceedings, they have received anonymous telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, and knocks on their doors in the early hours.

As further evidence of the General’s unusual and unwarranted behavior, there is another former employee’s case – that of Claudia –, and the General’s bizarre sense of entitlement. “She was feeling unwell, went to the female bathroom and was sitting on the toilet when the General came into the bathroom. She was too shocked to speak,” says Helena about her former colleague and friend.

Apparently the General thought Claudia was slacking off, and fired her while she was still sitting on the toilet.

Muenga

Another of the kitchen staff who worked for General Zé Maria was 24-year-old Muenga Garcia. She was one of three women who lost their jobs on a single day in March this year.

The General had taken an interest in her, asking her about her studies and life. When he learned she was in the fourth year of Clinical Analysis, he told her would find her a more suitable position. The General called Muenga several times, asking for her papers and organizing an internship in the SISM’s own clinic for a couple of months.

“He was so full of praise for me, and even included me in the ‘honor roll’ that would run on the television in the refectory, showing my diploma with music playing in the background”, Muenga recounts. “He asked me if I had a bank account and I said no.” “The next day when I went to clear his plate, there was an envelope underneath with 50,000 kwanzas waiting for me.”

Muenga told him that no-one had ever given her money for nothing but he insisted she take it. The next day she tried to return the money, feeling uncomfortable with the unwarranted attention.

The General claimed he was too busy to receive her.

The day after that, as Muenga was replacing the fruit plate in the refectory after lunch, she apparently neglected to remove two slices of unpeeled banana. She was already in class when an urgent phone call demanded she return because there was a problem with the fruit plate.

The General and Brigadier Óscar Marques confronted her and told her a colleague had identified her as the culprit. The General then called the SISM clinic and told the supervisor that she was no good and could not work there any more. They claimed she was careless, and that she could make a mistake with a DNA test or use the same syringe twice. In their hypothetical arguments, she could endanger lives.

“I was so upset, and crying so hard, I had a nose bleed and fainted”, Muenga recalls. “They had to give me Diazepam to calm me down.”

After the incident, she was then offered a lesser position as a cleaner on a lower salary. At every turn the General would harass and humiliate her. Finally, in March this year he asked her to name a particular bone in the human hand. Nerves got the better of her and she found herself unable to speak.

He sacked her on the spot.

That same day the General also sacked two other women: Efigénia Ribeiro who was also studying nursing because she was slow to answer when he asked her to name a bone in the foot, and Conceição, who was an Economics student, because she failed to answer an impromptu math question.

Farida

Farida began working for General Zé Maria in March and was sacked in May on the spurious grounds that she didn’t know how to properly clean a floor.

Farida remembers, “from the moment I started working for SISM, the General treated me like a princess. Colleagues told me that the Chief had his eye on a newbie and that it was me.”

At first it seemed harmless – her colleagues encouraged her to “serve him his yogurt”, to put him in a good mood. She thought it was just banter – but then the situation became more sinister. He asked her for her phone number and she told him she didn’t have a phone.

“The General then summoned me and told me to go with Captain Albert to a UNITEL store to choose a mobile phone. He said he wanted the most expensive model in the store. On our way there, I told Captain Albert I didn’t understand why the General would ask me to choose a phone for him. He said I would understand later and that I’d better do as asked or he, Captain Albert, could lose his job.”

The model Captain Albert chose for her cost 180,000 kwanzas, way in excess of anything she could afford on her salary. It was meant for her, to allow the General to call her. Farida refused the gift. “Then the boss started calling. Often it would be Colonel Jorge on the line, and he’d then connect to General Zé Maria.”

But he was getting nowhere with her. “My colleagues said the Boss was disappointed in me and I could no longer serve his table in the refectory. They said I hadn’t given him my yogurt.”

Farida wasn’t surprised at her firing. “Another colleague was abruptly asked to sing Edmásia’s song “Alma Nua” [Naked Soul]. She didn’t know the lyrics and she was fired there and then. Yet another, Márcia, was let go on for not picking up the phone when the General called on her birthday.

These are just the latest complaints in a seemingly unending string of allegations regarding harassment and unfair dismissal by the General, all made by unrelated women. The aging man seems to spend extraordinary amounts of time importuning young female employees, and firing them on whim.

However hope is on the horizon – when President José Eduardo dos Santos steps down in August, senior military figures are hopeful that some of the more embarrassing figures in his regime will also be on their way out.

Recently, the Angolan ruling party MPLA proposed, in Parliament, that the outgoing President and Vice-President be given absolute immunity from prosecution for any crimes they committed while in office.

Consequently, within days the regime has launched new indictments against whistle-blower and human rights defender, Rafael Marques de Morais.

Rafael Marques de Morais is the fearless, award-winning editor of the online news site Maka Angola. It focuses on  investigating and publishing citizens’ complaints about the all-too-common cases of corruption, abuse of power and human rights violations in oil-rich Angola.

He has been a thorn in the side of Angola’s President, José Eduardo dos Santos, who has amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune for himself, his family and his loyal supporters in the ruling MPLA party. Meanwhile, only permitting a trickle of the country’s oil wealth to be used for the benefit of the people he was supposed to serve. Outside Angola, the Dos Santos regime is a by-word for corruption and poor governance.

In a country where extra-judicial executions have been common (as reported by Maka Angola), state powers  evidently feel constrained from actually shooting those, like Mr. Marques de Morais, who expose dirty laundry. Instead, they harass, prosecute, jail and otherwise do all they can to disrupt their work.

It is no surprise that, with just two months to go to the elections, Angola’s President and Attorney General João Maria de Sousa are making yet another attempt to prosecute Mr. Marques de Morais. They must realize that their actions only serves to highlight their misdeeds and brings them to the attention of the wider world. Presumably they hope the distraction will leave Mr. Marques de Morais’ no time or energy to continue reporting on how they flout the constitution and the laws of the country to enrich themselves. Given Mr. Marques’s tireless record in truth-telling in spite of threats against him, this is highly unlikely.

Rafael Marques de Morais works mostly alone, operating on a shoestring, frustrating the robber baron cohort who have ruled Angola for the past 37 years, by ensuring there are few if any avenues for reprisals against him. I’ve no doubt these same robber barons would like to “shoot the messenger.”

As a number of small-sized private weeklies print Maka Angola’s articles, the Attorney General also indicted the director of the weekly O Crime, Mariano Lourenço, for republishing the offending article to send a message: Stop the dissemination of Maka Angola’s exposés, which are broadly disseminated at home and abroad.

But Mr. Marques de Morais’ reputation as a person of integrity, with the backing of democratic, human rights and anti-corruption organizations around the world, has given him too high a profile for the wrongdoers to be able to make him disappear. At least not without serious and uncomfortable consequences for the current powers.

Attorney General Betrays Ignorance of Angolan Law

Shockingly, the lawsuits further serve to highlight not only the Attorney-General’s pettiness, but also his incompetence.

The first consists of an Official Indictment from the Public Prosecution Office in the name of the President of the Republic and the Attorney General, citing the defendant Rafael Marques de Morais, as publisher of the Maka Angola website/watchdog, for two crimes:

(i) Outrage to a Body of Sovereignty (citing Art. 25, Para.1 of the Law on Crimes against State Security  (23/10), of 03/12 – which requires proof of 
“malicious outrage”, a term not contained in the indictment.)

(ii) Insult against Public Authority (citing Art. 181 of the Penal Code – whose wording regarding the principle of “sacred” respect by the public agent harks back to pre-democratic 19th Century Portugal. In technical terms, the standard requires that the alleged offense be made in the “presence” of the public authority.)

The second is a personal lawsuit in the name of the Attorney General, as a private citizen, General João Maria de Sousa. It accuses Rafael Marques of three offenses:
(i) Abuse of press freedom (citing Art. 74, Para. 2d) of the former Media Law (Law 7/06 of May 15);

(ii) Injury (citing Art. 7 of the Penal Code, when it should cite Art. 410).

(iii) Defamation (citing Article 410 of the Criminal Code, when it should cite Art. 407).

A robust defense can be offered to all these charges – but that is hardly the point. The purpose of bringing such a prosecution at this time is two-fold: to try to persuade public opinion that the published allegations of corruption and abuse of power against the President and Prosecutor-General are “fake news”, and to occupy Rafael Marques de Morais’ time in the crucial two months before the Angolan election with legal matters, to prevent publication of even more damaging reports.

Rafael Marques de Morais rather welcomes these lawsuits. He has chosen to live frugally, ensuring he has no assets worth seizing. And if it goes against him? He already knows what to expect, having been thrown in jail before, in common with all too many Angolan journalists and rights activists.

A trial ensures that all the evidence he has published is brought into the public domain again, giving even wider publicity to the reported misdeeds. It’s an echo chamber, repeating the allegations against the powerful so they are carried on the wind to every corner of Angola, amplified as they go.

The outcome is worthless to the regime. Imprisoning critics and opponents is a clear admission that they have no confidence of winning in the court of public opinion.  In addition, the ensuing show trial only serves to create a ‘cause celebre’, furthering publicity (and embarrassment) for the Angolan authorities.

The President and the Prosecutor General have failed to understand that there is no conspiracy against them.  Their critics are simply a conglomeration of individuals who decry the unlawful and unethical regime.    The whistleblowers may not share the same ideology however, they are working to the same end to: help foment in Angola a civil society that will promote real democracy, good governance, respect for the law and for human rights and justice for all.

It is right and proper that anyone who has served as head of state or government should be accorded due honors upon exiting the job. The peaceful transition of power is a cornerstone of democracy and those who have reached the pinnacle and who willingly step aside when their time is up, are rightfully guaranteed some special treatment for the rest of their days. It’s a mark of respect for their service.

With the prospect of a voluntary exit for José Eduardo dos Santos, who has held power in Angola for an astonishing 37 years, few would be so churlish as to deny the man who likes to call himself “the Architect of Peace” the consolations of orderly retirement.

What is customary around the world? No doubt his name will emblazon important civic works. Perhaps he is granted an annual pension and a security detail for life. Perhaps the state picks up the bill for a presidential museum or library, staff and office allowances. Perhaps the former President gets a seat in the upper chamber of parliament, an honorary position at a prestigious university or inclusion in a think-tank. It almost goes without saying that the state will guarantee all medical treatment and expenses. And at the very end, a state funeral.

However, the Angolan ruling party, the MPLA, is proposing for President Dos Santos, goes much further. First, it wants to confer President Emeritus status. This suggests that the outgoing head of state expects to retain some kind of ex-officio political role, particularly as he retains his position as the ruling MPLA president.

That could be problematic in the long run – one can imagine the return of factionalism with the Dos Santos cadres pitted against the Lourenço cadres. The MPLA has a sorry history when it comes to dealing with factionalism. In fact termination was preferred to conciliation – as the Nito Alves faction found to their cost on May 27, 1977, when tens of thousands of people were massacred to settle internal scores.

Some would argue that it is right and proper to offer the outgoing head of state a pension for life. However, in a cash-strapped Angola, whose economy has been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the present regime, is this strictly necessary? Especially when there is no doubt that President has become extraordinarily wealthy during his term in office, by means in which remain unclear.

One Member of Parliament, Irene Neto, the daughter of the country’s first post-independence President Agostinho Neto, has spoken out against this in the National Assembly, saying:

“In this instance, we know that finances will not be a problem for the future ex-President and first lady. It is fair that they should also benefit from these perks? No-one can argue that the current presidential family is poor, and for that reason they are more than able to attend to their political and personal needs with the dignity and decorum consistent with their high-ranking roles.”

Some in the MPLA are aghast that Irene Neto has spoken out like this – after all didn’t she and her family receive benefits as a result of her late and much-revered father having served as President? They cry “betrayal”, “ingrate” at her while conveniently forgetting that any handouts to the Neto family were given as a personal favor from his successor.

One thing we can be certain of: when a head of state or head of government needs a law guaranteeing them lifelong immunity from prosecution, they have clearly done something wrong and they fear retribution.

It is not a coincidence that Angola’s ruling MPLA party is introducing a bill safeguarding José Eduardo dos Santos and his administration from the legal consequences of their actions while in power. The party structures have been entirely complicit in almost four decades of behavior that could already have resulted in criminal charges if only the Angolan “Justice” system were independent, impartial, and based on the rule of law.

President Dos Santos treated the national treasury as though it were his private bank, doling out favors to all those whose loyalty he wished to buy. And subsequently using those favors as blackmail, in the event the beneficiaries ever try to blow the whistle on his misdeeds. No one dared to speak out because they all had their fingers in the pie.

Dos Santos and his entourage feasted after his inauguration in 2012.

Corrupting for protection

Any organization outside Angola that has had to do business with the Dos Santos administration is cognizant of at least a few of their habitual criminal behaviors. For instance, the ‘fees’, ‘permits’, and ‘fines’ required as a matter of course, inflating the cost; the requirement to partner up with nationals, individuals or businesses, before being awarded a contract. This is not the limit to their corrupt endeavors.

How does a serving General in the armed forces accumulate luxury homes overseas and finance expensive private educations for all their children in the world’s most elite institutions?

How does a member of the MPLA central committee or of Parliament afford luxury vehicles and first-class travel overseas?

Why is it that the President, the Vice-President, every government Minister, provincial Governor and so on and so forth down the ranks, have the ability to own a business and accumulate wealth and assets that are not commensurate with the published pay rate for their jobs?

Intelligence organizations, corruption watchdogs, and the like have a pretty good idea. They have examined the evidence, crunched the numbers, and concluded that Angola is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. Until a formal criminal investigation is launched in Angola itself, it is impossible for Angolan nationals to even begin to comprehend the magnitude of the economic crimes committed against the national interest by those who won power first by bullet, then by ballot.

So why guarantee lifelong immunity for prosecution to a man widely suspected of larceny on the grandest scale? Perhaps because only by ensuring he remains in power and in control of both the national economy and the justice system can the MPLA draw a veil over what has already occurred. The party’s reputation and future viability would otherwise be in grave danger.

Conservative estimates suggest that a large percentage of Angola’s main source of income, the revenues from its reserves of oil and gas, has been diverted. According to the IMF, US $32 billion went missing between 2007 and 2010 alone! Let’s be clear. Money from an asset that belongs to all the Angolan people has been stolen for the benefit of the few, the elite. As the old adage says: the fish rots from the head down.

How did the President consolidate his grip on power? How does anyone rule for so many years without any challenge from younger, better educated, and ambitious ‘young Turks’? There’s what you might call the ‘Mafia’ model: use a monopoly on force to instill the threat of death or extreme violence not just to the individual but to all their loved ones. And there’s the ‘Patronage’ model: buy their loyalty and make them complicit in the illegal activity. Any dictator worth his salt knows the playbook by heart. As a result of the distribution of wealth beyond the dreams of most men, the levers of power are all under the control of the Dos Santos MPLA, whether government, military or judiciary. All kept in line by carrots and sticks: a share of the loot versus potential persecution or worse.

The Angolan Constitution was supposed to prohibit members of government from profiting from additional positions or occupations. Instead from the President down, everyone who owes their job to the ruling party uses it as a platform for more lucrative activities. How many own businesses? How much of their attention is given to their nominal job?

How does a man like José Eduardo dos Santos become an alleged billionaire? How is it possible that his immediate family own or are in charge of innumerable businesses linked to state money and state projects? They have woven an intricate web of legitimate and shell companies registered here and there around the world, obscuring ownership by installing paid flunkeys and ever more distant family members as partners or board members. How did they even get the seed money to start those businesses?

In the case of the President’s daughter, who proudly affirms she is Africa’s first female billionaire, the ‘seed money’ was traced to a loan from Sonangol, the state-owned oil monopoly in which she now controls in the name of her father.

The family businesses change their names or change hands so frequently that it would take international cooperation, expert investigators, forensic accountant and unlimited time and funds to trace all the links and money transfers going back over nearly 40 years. They have exercised such a significant level of diffusion and effort that strongly suggests an intended cover-up.

For years the first family and their entourage have arrogantly assumed they can do as they wish and get away with it all. Perhaps their confidence is wavering in the face of an avalanche of news reports, fueled by leaks from some of their cohort, detailing some of their financial misdeeds. Hence their pressing need for a law that would guarantee permanent impunity. If they had done nothing wrong, had nothing to hide, nothing to fear, such a guarantee would not even be necessary.

When the incoming administration faces the wrath of a deceived public and begins to grasp the scale of the crimes committed by their predecessors, how long will it be until they repeal the immunity law and go for the jugular? And there will be no guarantees of immunity overseas. With the former Vice-President and a presidential daughter already indicted in separate corruption cases in Portugal, the number of safe hiding places is diminishing. The piles of cash sitting in foreign offshore banks could be confiscated, the erstwhile ‘first family’ summoned to trial.

Frankly, even if the MPLA steamrollers this law into effect, it may be a wasted effort. The ancient Greek philosophers expressed it best: the wheels of the gods may grind slowly – but they grind exceedingly fine.

Reports from the diamond-rich province of Lunda Norte in north-eastern Angola say police opened fire without warning on peaceful demonstrations by separatists on Sunday, killing one bystander and wounding others.

Protest marches in the region had been organized by a banned political organization, the ‘Movimento do Protectorado Lunda-Tchokwé’ (MPL-T, Movement for the Lunda-Tchokwé Protectorate), which advocates independence for the Tchokwé peoples who live in the former ancient kingdom of the Lundas. The separatists have argued for a measure of autonomy, similar to that accorded to Scotland within the United Kingdom.

Insiders say the MPL-T wrote to Angola’s President José Eduardo dos Santos earlier this month to ask for dialogue and for permission to hold a public demonstration. It appears that no march permit was sought from the local authorities.

Up to a thousand supporters are said to have turned out in the town of Luzamba at 7am with the aim of marching to the municipal offices in nearby Cuango, the provincial capital.

Participants said that as they made their way through the town, they saw that police had set up a barricade on the edge of the River Mumbe. As the marchers approached, police at the barricade fired live rounds, with one bullet striking a bystander in the abdomen.

Eye-witnesses say the man who died, Pimbi Txifutxi, a 35 year-old family man, was not taking part in the protest march and was merely making his way to work from a nearby church, bible in hand. He was taken to the Cuango municipal hospital but died within the hour.

Astonishingly, given that Cuango is in the heart of the fabulously wealthy diamond region, the hospital has no morgue. As a result, distraught family members had the task of taking the corpse to another town, Xá-Muteba, 50 kms to the South East.

The man who fired the fatal shots was known to several witnesses who identified him as a man named João Macanza, a security guard working for the Cuango Municipal Command. They say no investigation has been launched and the shooter has not been detained.

However, the local government and branch of Angola’s ruling MPLA party has agreed to compensate the victim’s family with grain and flour for the wake, in what amounts to an admission of responsibility for the needless death.

According to Alexandre Narciso, who is active in a different (and legal) opposition political party, the PRS, there was a separate incident as a second group of protestors walked through Camarianga district. He told Maka Angola that police officers there also opened fire with live ammunition to force the marchers to stop and went on to detain some 50 people.

Alexandre Narciso says that he was told in person by a local headman (Soba) and member of the ruling MPLA party, that one bullet struck his twelve-year-old son in the right arm. Soba Mwatchissata told him that he had gone to the municipal command offices to demand an explanation and got a beating for his pains.

“He says he was hit over the head and kicked while he was down, all in the presence of the Cuango Operations Chief and First Police Station Commander, Joaquim Tchilóia”, says Mr Narciso. “The headman is in the MPLA and yet he was beaten and was told that his son, a minor, was part of the anti-police (*hence anti-MPLA) demonstration.”

Maka Angola telephoned the Cuango police chief, Joaquim Tchilóia, who admitted that there were casualties: “Yes, there were victims when the protest was contained. I cannot say any more than that.” He referred further enquiries to the municipal commander who he says has the authority to speak to the media on such matters. But the telephones go unanswered at the municipal commander’s office and there has been no response to the recorded messages left.

A second protest march organized by the MPL-T took place in the town of Cafunfo, with three groups, each numbering several hundred people apiece, marching from different points in the town towards the centre. They too report being fired on.

“We saw Lieutenant Zito Cassanje, also known as ‘Zito Commando’, with 12 soldiers in a Unimog vehicle. The lieutenant ordered the Unimog driver to try to disperse the crowd, who had managed to get around the police barricade, by driving through them. People scattered, fearing they would be run over. Then, they opened fire, wounding one lady in the right leg” a local activist and witness named Salvador Fragoso told Maka Angola.

It’s not clear why the separatist group called its supporters onto the streets without having a permit to hold public marches. Maka Angola tried to make contact with the MPL-T’s leader, José Mateus Zecamutchima, so far without success.

The MPLA says that the police did not have orders to open fire and that if individual officers did so, they may be subject to legal consequences, although so far there has been no indication that any officer has been arrested.

More than 30,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are housed in two temporary reception camps, Kakanda and Mussunga, in Lunda-Norte province.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that about 500 refugees are arriving in these camps each day. Congolese citizens are continuing to cross the border to escape the current conflict in the Kasai region, which erupted in April last year.

Last April, in addition to the refugees, around 180 armed men from the Congolese armed forces and police also escaped from the clashes between government forces and the Kamwina Nsapu militia, according to the data this website received from the local authorities. The same sources say that more than 100 members of the Congolese forces managed to escape the control of the defence and security forces, and ‘disappeared’ in the Angolan town of Dundo, while the rest were repatriated.

In the same month, on April 14, the rebel group attacked the Itando border crossing point in pursuit of members of the Congolese armed forces and police forces, and have since carried out several attacks on Angolan territory.

Maka Angola has, over several days, verified the situation and heard chilling testimonies in the reception centers of Kakanda and Mussunga.

Catharine Tombe, 47, was forced to watch her father being killed by Kamwina Nsapu militias.

Before that, unknown numbers of militias took turns to rape his mother in his presence.

“My father, could not bear seeing the militias rape his mother and tried to fight. They cut off his head with a machete,” she says.

Catharine pauses to catch her breath. She admits she lacks the courage and strength to revive the barbarity she witnessed. She gazes at a child, her niece, who looks about seven. The child survived as if by a miracle. “The militias poured fuel oil on the girl’s body, locked her inside a house of sticks and set it on fire. She survived, despite the burns.”

Children are the ones who suffer most from war. According to information provided by UNHCR, 53 percent of refugees in both camps are children. Hundreds of children, separated from parents and family during the escape, are housed in four tents in the Kakanda camp.

Mbumba-Ntumba, 65, housed in the Kakanda camp, recalls the horrors he experienced in the early hours of one morning in April.

“I was in my house when a group of people commanded by the chief of the area where I live came in and began to beat me. They cut my left arm with a machete and continued to beat me with the machete on my head until I was unconscious.”

He tells how he was rescued, still unconscious, by volunteers from the International Red Cross who took him to the Angolan border.

Odia Rosa, 40, described the ineptitude of the Armed Forces of the DRC. Her village of just over 1,000 inhabitants was attacked in April, a few kilometers from a government military base.

“The soldiers knew that the population was being attacked, but they did nothing. [DRC President] Kabila is to blame for this. The more war, the longer he stays in power,” she says.

Amid the violence as she fled to Angola, Odia Rosa was separated from her 15-year-old daughter. For four months she has been hoping that her daughter survived. Whenever new refugees arrive, Odia runs to meet them, to see if she finds her daughter or someone who might have news of her.

The Kamwina Nsapu militia began its rebellion last year in Eastern Kasai province with support among the Baluba and Batetela ethnic groups, against the government forces but also against citizens of other ethnic groups.

Mbumba-Ntumba, a victim of the Kamwina Nsapu’s brutality.

Shortages in the camps

In the reception camps, the shortages are plain to see. There are no mattresses. Adults and children sleep on the floor and some women, including pregnant women, sleep in the open because shelters and tents distributed by UNHCR are insufficient.

Refugees receive only one meal of porridge and beans a day. Many prefer to eat only at 4:00 p.m., “to balance the stomach”.

Dos Santos as a stabilizing factor?

Since Angola attained peace in 2002, the country has portrayed President José Eduardo dos Santos on the international stage as a major factor of political-military stability in the Great Lakes region, of which the DRC is a part.

However, the reality on the northeast border of Angola reveals the state of disregard and neglect of the Angolan Armed Forces, especially its Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISM).

Last April, local military personnel, surprised by the attacks and unprepared, even carried out raids on young civilians in Lunda-Norte, particularly in the Cuango municipality. According to several denunciations made by local citizens and relatives of the young people concerned, these youths were sent, without basic training, to fight against the Congolese attackers,

In the Lundas, local authorities have noted that the SISM’s regional representative was evicted from the residence in Saurimo that had been rented by the military intelligence, after rents were unpaid for two years. “How is it possible for Military Intelligence in Luanda to know what is really going on at the border, when their representative had to leave the area due to non-payment of rent?”, questioned a local authority on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the situation in Luanda is no less chaotic. Officials in key positions at the SISM have not taken up their posts since they were appointed by the President of the Republic and Commander-in-Chief José Eduardo dos Santos in 2013, creating an unprecedented climate of demoralization. The infamous head of SISM, General José António Maria “Zé Maria” has prohibited them from signing any documents. Some were ordered to leave the SISM and sent home, even though they had not been dismissed by José Eduardo dos Santos. These include, for example, Lieutenant-General Koquelo, Chief of Intelligence of the Army Command; Brigadier Calongo, deputy chief of Intelligence of the General Staff of the FAA; and Brigadier Simba, head of the Operations Directorate of Military Intelligence.

On 27 June, General Zé Maria bypassed the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, to dismiss, on a whim, Brigadiers Mbuila João Minguela and João Kaluhapa, respectively heads of the directorates of Military Counterintelligence and Military Intelligence Operations in the Army Command. The president alone has the competence to remove general officers.

Unaware of this situation, many Angolan citizens along the border continue to harbour the idea that an Angolan military intervention in the Kasai region may restore some order and stop the influx of refugees into Angolan territory.

Aisha Lopes, the fashion designer, and her husband Angelica Bernardo da Costa (also known as Mujahid Kenyata) are Angolan nationals who converted to Islam in 1996.   Aisha, a diabetic, was nursing her 26-day-old infant delivered via high-risk Caesarean surgery when security forces raided the family’s apartment at 5 am on December 2 ^nd , 2016. 

More than 20 armed officers from the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) and the security branch burst in and detained her and her baby, along with her 39-year-old husband. Aisha says they ransacked the apartment, seizing computers, phones, more than 200 books, the couple’s bank cards and all the personal documents belonging to the couple.   “They even took my medical reports. They did not leave a single sheet of paper. “

“We are poor and the agents mocked us, saying that the head of the terrorists in Angola had almost nothing of worth in their home.” 

They drove Aisha to the little shop in the Martyrs of Kifangondo neighborhood where she sells Islamic clothes.

“The shop is so small that the 18 detectives and police who accompanied me could not fit inside. They set about hitting the walls and destroying the mannequins store to see if there was anything inside them. “She recalls.

“They demanded the shop’s computer and I said there was not one. After they informed the chief that the shop was clean, I ordered them to take me to where they had taken the 15. ‘ [A reference to the 15 youths arrested and charged with plotting to stage a coup and kill the president, after meeting to discuss the book on non-violent resistance.   They were initially interrogated in Cacuaco.]

“There, they held me and my baby at gunpoint in the car for about an hour.”   Worse was to come. 

Aisha Lopes was being interrogated, she could see through the window that the police officers were amusing themselves by tossing her crying 26-day-old baby in the air.   In addition to the rough treatment, the infant had no protection from the blazing sun. She says the police officers were yelling things like “are of a terrorist” and “speak to the baby in Somali” as they toyed with the distressed infant. 

Over a period of about ten hours of questioning, the diabetic nursing mother was denied water and medication as well as access to her child. “I begged so much for them to bring my baby to me but they would not.”   Aisha eventually lost consciousness.

“When I came around, they gave me the baby and it was totally sunburnt, no skin left on his lips. He was in bad shape after so many hours exposed to the sun. ”   This abusive treatment of this Muslim mother and child happened just 22 days before Christmas.

INTERROGATION UNDER DURESS

Aisha Lopes said the questions that the six interrogators asked her over and over were nonsensical.   They took turns to threaten her while the other agents ‘played’ with the baby they were calling ‘they are of a terrorist’.

‘I was asked since when was my husband a jihadist. Since when was the leader of the terrorists in Angola? What was the date of the trip to Syria? When was an act of terrorism committed in Angola? They asked nonsense questions. They said the interrogation would only end when I said what they wanted to hear. “

She was shown the content of her Facebook page as proof of her radicalism, the page she says is essentially about Islamic fashion which she uses to promote her work as a designer.   Additionally, she has used her Facebook page to publicize the program of tea-party meetings with non-Muslim women to explain the Islamic religion and break down prejudices. 

“They used this to accuse me of recruiting people into the Islamic state.”   In addition to Aisha and her husband, five others had been arrested.     One of the co-accused, Joel Said, had simply posted a question on his Facebook thread asking why people spoke of Muslims who defend their homeland.   “I replied: the truth is a sharp knife that hurts! They [the SIC] twisted that to say that Mujahid Kenyata [her husband] is the spearhead of the Islamic State in Angola. “

Aisha Lopes was detained in the disused facilities at the Cacuaco Municipal Court for 11 days.

“We spent the days sitting with guns pointed at us. The caesarean stitching opened three times but I was forbidden medical attention.   The guards (who said they were military belonging to the Presidential Guard Unit) kept their weapons on us and raised them at any movement, such as if I tried to get up or change position. “

One week after Their Arrests, the seven co-defendants Were expresso together for cross-examination on December 9 ^th , 2016.

“Lando was sitting next to me. I dropped the cloth that I was using to fan the baby because of the heat. I asked him to pick it up because I had trouble bending over due to the pain (of the caesarean wound) and having the baby on my lap. The five armed men behind us immediately pointed out the guns at Lando’s head and loaded [bullets into the chamber]. He kept calm, picked up the cloth and gave it to me. “

SPURIOUS STATEMENTS

Aisha’s answers during her interrogation fit on two pages.   She says: “They gave me a two-page document to sign, then put eight pages in front of it.”   She alleges that the prosecutors made up a series of statements to flesh out what was documented as her statement. “They put things in my statement that I never said and did not read it to me. They forced me to sign it without reading it. “

She says she only became aware of this meddling during the reading of the charges at the next court hearing when Prosecutor Elisete da Graça read out the eight-page document.

“I protested, stating what I had, and had not, said.   She began scratching out the disputed sentences. The next day another prosecutor came and forced me to sign another statement.   Everything I had not said and that was scratched out the day before, was put back in. “

The prosecutor had assigned a lawyer to Aisha Lopes who introduced himself only to Dr Wilson.   He insisted that she sign the document.   “I was coerced into signing the document without being given the opportunity to read it.”

CHARGED WITH TERROR OFFENCES

The couple, along with the five co-accused, Were formally charged on April 26 ^th this year by prosecutor Eugénia Santos.   The Attorney General of the Republic cited the Law on Combatting Money Laundering and Financing Terrorism (Law 12/10).

The charges against them include membership of the Islamic State terror group, known as ISIS or DAESH, having sworn loyalty and obedience to its leader Abu Bakri al-Bagdadi, and, spreading and teaching the Islamic faith in Angola.

The evidence of these alleged terrorist acts, the charge sheet lists items seized from the suspects.   These included five laptop computers, 11 mobile phones, seven USB memory sticks, 168 assorted books, two Angolan passports, the PlayStation, the hard drive, two rucksacks and a wallet with personal documents.

Khadija Salvador, is the mother of one of the co-accused Joel Said Salvador Paulo, aged 22, who was detained on the same day as Mrs Lopes. She says: “The PlayStation belongs to my husband’s nephew, who was spending a few days with us. The wallet is my son’s. They [the police] even took a sum of 30,000 kwanzas I had given him to buy clothes.   After (searching) my house they went to my sister’s, where they demand the family’s phones, the children’s phones, all the books, and even the car documents.   They took everything. “

The Criminal Investigation Service concluded that of the hundreds of books seized, 38 were “of a political nature, with strong radical and subversive tendencies”.

An Angolan intelligence specialist who is familiar with the case has given his professional opinion that the charges are unfounded. Maka Angola: “There is no material that impute criminal responsibility to the accused, whether from the material or the moral point of view. The process is quite lacking in terms of investigation and therefore has no juridical consistency. “

Mariana de Abreu, coordinator of Amnesty International for Angola and Mozambique says: “The way Aisha Lopes has been treated by police authorities in Angola, with threats of beating, ridicule and mistreatment of her young son, is serious.”

Legal analyst Rui Verde describes the prosecution as an example of misuse of the instruments of what the German jurist Günther Jakobs called Feindstrafrecht: ‘criminal law of the enemy’, a concept based on the need to elaborate a special criminal law to which the state would Not subject its citizens but only its enemies.

“Applying this concept to Aisha Lopes reveals that the Angolan State considers its citizens to be enemies,” Rui Verde concludes.

LINKS TO OPPOSITION ACTIVISM

Angola’s ruling MPLA has a long tradition of considering its opponents as the ‘enemies of the state and dispensing arbitrary punishment to its critics.

Aisha Lopes’s family is in stranger to Angola’s arbitrary justice.   Her father, Ndom Zuão de Gouveia Kieto, was national director of State Security until 1986.   While in that position he was accused of an attempted coup.   “The trial was secret. The family read in the newspaper that he had been sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to Bentiaba [prison camp]. ”   The family contends that he was subsequently poisoned, in 2003 by a former DISA [security service] colleague.

Aisha Lopes and Angélico Bernardo da Costa were part of the early hip hop underground movement in Angola along with Phathar Mak, Kool Klever and Yannick Ngombo among other well-known rappers and musicians. They were known by their rapper names, Black Queen and MC Jegas. 

As part of their political education, they began to study the development of Pan-Africanism and the black movements in the United States. “Malcolm X was our idol and that spurred our interest in Islam,” Aisha says.

‘We converted, believing that in Islam we would find what inspired Malcolm X.   We realized that it was different, but we kept it to the Qur’an, thank God. We left rap and stopped going to illicit places.   Aisha Lopes has been one of the most visible faces of the spread of Islam in Angola, regularly participating in radio and television debates.

A BANNED RELIGION

The Angolan government forbids the public practice of Islam in Angola, defining it as an illegal religion and ordering the closure of mosques.

On November 26th, 2013, amid various official statements against Islam, an official from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, Vitorino Mário, declared on Angolan national radio: “Never at any time has the Islamic religion been recognized in Angola. Consequently, all religious activity linked to Islam in Angola is conducted outside the law. “

Consequently, those who worship Islam are outside the normal respects of freedom of religion. 

According to the chairperson of the Islamic Community in Angola, David Already, “we are subjected to what amounts to theater, farce by the security services”.

“Angola wants to silence the Islamic religion in Angola by arresting the young people who are most active on social networks where they comment on and promote Islam in the context of freedom of expression,” he says.

I have argues that if the Angolan government intends to proscribe the Islamic religion in Angola it should explain itself and act transparently, rather than arresting young people for nothing.   “Reading books is not a crime,” David says.

INCOHERENT TERROR POLICY

SIC justified the Muslim arrests saying: “Terrorist acts constitute a serious threat to all states in the world, thus calling for thorough and appropriate prevention, keeping in mind that an agent or member of a terrorist group is difficult to distinguish from other people.”

The Attorney General’s Office admits that it sought advice and input from Interpol and the Brazilian judicial authorities as well as the Criminal Investigation Service and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as it tried to establish what the Republic of Angola’s official position in relation to Islamic State and Its leaders should be.   It got no response.   Apparently there is no official policy regarding ISIS / DAESH.

On December 13, Aisha Lopes and Fatima Salvador, the second woman in the group, were released conditionally on proof of identity and residence.   Six men have remained in detention for seven months: Angélico Bernardo da Costa, Joel Said Salvador Paulo, Bruno Alexandre Lopes dos Santos, Lando Panzo José ‘Mohamed Lando’ and Dala Justino Camuejo ‘Yassin Ramadan Camueji’.

More about them and their cases will be published here shortly.

CORRECTION: a wallet with personal documents was incorrectly translated as “file documents”. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Members of Angola’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) have described how the legal procedures for collecting and tabulating the results of Wednesday’s election were flouted by officials who reported favorable results to the MPLA, with no indication of how these results were calculated.

Opposition leaders have accused MPLA of inventing the results. The reports of malpractice come as opposition parties release the results of parallel counts, calculated by adding up the results posted at individual polling stations. These parallel counts show the MPLA in first place, but without an outright majority.

The CNE began to announce the preliminary election results on Thursday afternoon, before results from the provinces had been approved either at local level or by the National Counting Center. According to the numbers the CNE announced, the MPLA won a majority with 64.57%, more than double the total of UNITA, which was in second place with 24.4%. CASA-CE took third place with 6.45%.

The president of the opposition Social Renewal Party (PRS), Benedito Daniel, described the results as “completely false”.

“The CNE’s results were not approved either in the provinces or in Luanda. These results are completely made up.”

In contrast to previous elections, results were not projected onto a screen, but the CNE spokesperson, Júlia Ferreira, simply read them out from loose sheets of paper in a folder. She did not even answer questions.

“She read what she read,” one journalist said.

Results were read aloud at the National School of Public Administration in Morro Bento, although the National Tallying Center is at the Talatona Convention Center, some kilometers away. The press conference served to keep the journalists away from the counting center.

In the 1992, 2008, and 2012 elections, the results were projected on screens put up by the CNE, and updates could be followed on television and other media. The National Counting Center is better equipped than ever before, and has these means at its disposal.

Members of the National Electoral Commission board, and political parties agents were at the counting center until 2 am on Thursday, and left only for a few hours. Throughout the day they have noted no signs of results being tallied in the counting center.

A senior CNE official, who prefers not to be identified, confirmed to Maka Angola what is happening at the National Tallying Center, where hundreds of people are employed.

“I have not yet seen a single fax at the center. All the time I’ve been here, I was only sending and receiving test pages from before the elections. I do not know what to do. I have also seen a single tally [whether from a voting table or a voting station], the official said.

“The US delegation visited, having got the permission of the State Security official stationed at the center, so they would be impressed. Apart from that, we have no more information, “the same official said.

The UNITA representative José Pedro Katchiungo confirmed: “We have seen no counting in the counting center. We’ve been here since yesterday. We have not seen a single fax arrive yet we have CNE projections. How? “

One might argue that communications between the CNE and the rest of the country have been difficult. But let us look at what happened at the Provincial Tallying Center in Luanda.

“We have been here since yesterday morning (August 23) in the room next to the tallying room and up to now no member of the electoral commission has access to the approval of data,” one of the commissioners said.

“We have been sitting since yesterday looking at the map that gives us zero results. We are hearing the CNE’s projection, which seems to come from another galaxy. It’s unbelievable, “the commissioner added.

“We [members of the National Electoral Commission Board] had to confirm the results by verifying the results lists and ratifying them with our signatures. Only in this way will the results be announced, “the commissioner explained.

Opposition Better Prepared

Unlike previous elections, the opposition has managed this time to present a vote count as an alternative to that which the MPLA and CNE released to local and foreign media without supporting data.

According to the parallel count, done on the basis of the results posted by each voting station, UNITA claims that the MPLA has only a narrow lead.

Based on 1.2 million votes – approved in the tallies from polling stations, which are produced by the CNE and signed by the polling station clerks and representatives from the contesting parties – the MPLA was ahead with 47.6% of the votes counted. UNITA followed with 40.2%, CASA-CE with 9.15%, and three other parties with the remaing percentage.

In Luanda, out of about a million voters, UNITA and the MPLA were neck-and-neck with

42.48% and 42.08% respectively.

This count shocked the MPLA. In reality, although it indicated a plurality of votes, it was doubtful that the MPLA would obtain 50%, and it had no chance of attaining a qualified majority. It needs two-thirds of the seats in parliament to be able to rule in a dictatorial manner and ignore that it is part of a democracy.

Earlier, the MPLA secretary for electoral affairs, João Martins, announced at the party headquarters that the MPLA had won with 65% of the vote. An hour after this announcement, the CNE spokesperson herself announced that votes were not even yet being counted.  

The president of the PRS, Benedito Daniel, said his party was conducting a parallel vote count, based on the results that his party delegates obtained at the polling stations.

“The CNE is not scrutinizing the results from voting stations and has left us with implausible results. The CNE must stop this manipulation. These are not results that correspond to the truth. They were not sent by the voting stations and I don’t know where this will end.”

Swindle

Thus far, the provinces have not yet confirmed the local results and have therefore not communicated them to the CNE. So, where did the CNE get the data from? The information given by the CNE cannot be considered valid without the legal confirmation of the results in the presence of the contesting parties, as provided for in the law.

Additionally, up until mid-afternoon on Thursday, the Municipal Electoral Commissions had not sent any data to the National Tallying Center in Luanda because they had no orders to work.

It is known that on Wednesday, the CNE suspended the scrutinizing of votes owing to politically motivated orders from above, when the predicted outcome started to look as if it might go against the MPLA’s plans.

Across the country, bizarre situations arose during the voting process.

For example, according to the electoral commissioner, Muanauta, electoral officials in Camaxilo commune, Caungula district, Lunda Norte province, only started working after 6pm, and the local population of eight villages refused to vote in the dark.

In Cafunfo in Cuango district, Lunda Norte province, the former administrator of Luremo commune and the local MPLA secretary removed the ballot boxes from polling stations 7809 and 7813, and took them away without anyone stopping them.

In any case, the last vestiges of the MPLA’s democratic legitimacy fell away as soon as the party felt threatened by the emerging results. The party therefore ordered the counting to stop and announced a victory with a ‘qualified’ majority. It qualified only as fraud.

“Angolans voted in a calm and civilized manner,” said UNITA representative José Pedro Katchiungo. “We will confront the CNE and demand an explanation of how it arrived at these results. No one should create a disturbance, just do not give the MPLA a pretext to get out of this through violence,” he insisted.

On September 21 we will have a new president, after 38 years with José Eduardo dos Santos. The National Electoral Commission has named João Lourenço president-elect, without legally validating the votes in 15 of the 18 provinces. The MPLA, already in power for 42 years will continue to rule for a further five-year term. Anyone who things that the law is worth when MPLA’s leaders’ interests are at stake, is mistaken.

It is worth taking a look back at the history of presidential power in Angola and its popular legitimacy.

In 1975, Agostinho Neto became president through the unilateral declaration of independence, after expelling the other liberation movements, FNLA (led by Holden Roberto) and UNITA (led by Jonas Savimbi), from Luanda. The three movements had formed a transitional government, and the process of declaring independence ought to have happened only after elections were held. Instead, the most cunning and strategic leader emerged the victor, and the dictatorship of Agostinho Neto was thus assured.

The Angolan people had no part in choosing him.

José Eduardo dos Santos assumed power when Neto died in 1979, not chosen according to the popular will but by his peers in MPLA Political Bureau.

In 1992, Dos Santos and the then rebel leader Jonas Savimbi should have contested the second round of voting, since the majority in the first round. This second round never happened and Dos Santos remained in office, without a popular mandate. Savimbi formally accepted the election result and waited for the second round. The war is another story that we need to tell truthfully and impartially.

José Eduardo dos Santos himself insisted in 2005 on seeking a Supreme Court ruling that annulled his presidential mandates for lack of popular and democratic legitimacy. His purpose was obvious: to remain in the presidency, ignoring the two-term limit of the 1992 Constitutional Law.

We then had the 2008 legislative elections. Many Angolans have already forgotten that, at that time, the MPLA leadership’s phobia about direct presidential elections had deepened. José Eduardo dos Santos tried to justify this on the grounds that the presidential elections should take place in 2009, one year after the legislative ones. No election happened in 2009.

There came the 2010 Constitution, which dealt with the MPLA leadership’s phobia by taking away the right of the people to freely and directly elect their president.

Only under this system did Jose Eduardo dos Santos agree to run for parliament in 2012, and to become president automatically, as the first name on the list of the party that won the legislative elections. I did not go with the people’s judgment. He passed this lesson to John the Baptist, whom he chose his successor.

In 2017, there was nothing to suggest that John Lawrence would steal the elections wholesale. People expected him to become president with the usual cheating, made possible by the MPLA’s absolute control of the electoral process.

And so Angola has its third president in history, this time without even the pretense of legitimacy.

This history demonstrates the deep division among Angolans and their passive resistance to the power of the MPLA.

Blessed be the people, cursed their self-imposed leaders.

Note: This text was initially delivered as the Hormuud Lecture of the African Studies Association, at its annual meeting in Chicago, on November 18, 2017.

Within days after delivering this lecture, I will be publishing the first report focused exclusively on extrajudicial killings in Angola.

These executions were carried out in the past year by the Angolan Criminal Investigation Service operatives across the two most populated neighborhoods of the capital Luanda, namely Cacuaco and Viana. In the report there are more than 100 victims identified and additional unidentified individuals suspected of being delinquents or simply innocent.

During my investigation I discovered the existence of an open field, next to a primary school in Viana (Escola Primária e do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Secundário nº 5113), that locals called the slaughterhouse or more commonly the death camp. The state operatives usually took their victims to this slaughterhouse in broad daylight. Often children were playing soccer in the field while students were hanging around on a break. The operatives let their victims out of their vehicle and executed them at point blank range. A bullet to the head was the signature shot. The bodies are left exposed for all to see.

It was a nightmare to get people to talk. Such was the climate of terror and fear in the affected areas where collaborators held the power to decide on a whim the life or death of their neighbors. These collaborators had the simple task of judging by merely pointing a finger at those to be executed without further questioning. Some tech savvy executioners carried ipads around with the pictures to identify their targets. Most were just trigger-happy.

But I finally had a major breakthrough. Days ago while undertaking the final cross-checking of some of my findings, I interviewed a mother, Teresa Monteiro, who the police took from her house at dawn. They beat up her 15 year old son in front of her and hauled him off to police station number 44 to force the mother to show where her older son, a suspected criminal, lived with his wife and two children. On the way, they told her to prepare the coffin for it would be her son’s last day. And it was. The mother also revealed to me that, on the same day her son was executed, more than fifteen youths met the same fate in her neighborhood. The death squads had disseminated the information, among local residents, that they had a quota of 250 youths to kill in that area of Luanda. And they were on track to meet their goal.

But there was also the equally shocking case of the petty criminals or suspects who had been released under a general amnesty, passed in July 2016. Many were hunted down and executed within weeks of their release. Such was the case of Kilandamoko João António, known as “Ti Porém”, who was released on December 9, 2016, after serving two years and a half in jail for robbery – only to be executed the very next month, on January 24, 2017. Ti Porém called his mother Makiesse, for her to see the face of the criminal investigation officer who was killing him at her doorstep.

Ti Porém had found a decent job as an electrician. But three times a week he had to report to the police station before going to work, and that day the police told him it was his last day reporting. A very well known officer and executioner, Pula-Pula, followed Ti Porém as the latter went back home to pick up his tools, and executed him in front of his mother at point blank range. The same Pula-Pula went to the wake and funeral, in the company of several police officers, in a display of the institutionalization of the extrajudicial killings and impunity.

The details of the modus operandi of the state-sponsored death squads reveal how psychopaths have been given license to kill.

Academia

We are here at an academic gathering on Africa. Why bring up such a dispiriting human rights issue, when Angola has just held presidential elections last August, and it seems all peaceful? From abroad there is a positive view of the country because a new president, João Lourenço, has been inaugurated after 38 years of rule by Mr. José Eduardo dos Santos.

Nevertheless, the party in power, MPLA, has remained the same for 42 years. In September, the extrajudicial killings resumed, after a break during the electoral period. Extrajudicial killings have always been an integral part of the arbitrariness of power in Angola. Why take notice now?

While reporting on some cases for my website, Maka Angola, I started receiving alerts on more extrajudicial killings and I realized there was a pattern, which needed to be investigated.

Partial view of the killing field, known as the slaughterhouse.

The extrajudicial killings underscore three major intertwined issues in Angola: first it is the arbitrariness of power and impunity that bred institutionalized corruption; second it is the culture of fear that prevented the emergence of an organized civil society; and, third it is how both have produced a low public expectations of accountability and delivery of services.

To a certain extent, the arbitrariness of power and impunity has shaped the peace that followed the end of the war in Angola in 2002. The disregard for the lives of common citizens has been one of the defining behaviors of the ruling elite. It is with such disregard for human lives that the leaders of the country have been able to maintain Angola’s position as the country with one of the highest child mortality rate in the world, after 15 years of peace. State resources that should have been allocated to the health sector, basic sanitation and food security have been plundered with abandon.

Some will say that 15 years is not enough time to recover from the war. However, this abuse of the population by their own leaders is not a product of war, but of institutionalized impunity. Furthermore, billions of dollars from oil revenues have gone unaccounted, and in the past decade or so, Angola has borrowed up to US $50 billion from China, as the Chinese ambassador to Angola, Cui Aimin, publicly revealed last August. The general public has not felt the benefits of such heavy borrowing.

Angola is a country where children die aplenty on a daily basis, and no public mobilization takes place to confront the tragedy. How can people find the strength to complain collectively about those executed under the label of being criminals, even though no investigation had taken place?

As for the culture of fear that prevails in Angolan society, it also merits a few more words. Angolans often ask themselves why ordinary people are so passive, when there is so much abuse by those in power. More often people refer to the massacres of May 27, 1977 when untold thousands of people were executed in a rage of power, as the trauma to justify their inaction.

Even with a new president, 40 years on, some of the executioners hold important positions of power, and remain the faces of fear mongering. This is a regime that cleanses and regenerates itself with blood on the streets.

More recently, in 2015, the Angolan regime deployed the army and special police forces in the massacre of hundreds of pilgrims of a religious sect on Mount Sumi, in Huambo province. The sect was growing outside the government’s control and challenging its authority. Then, it put the leader of the sect The Light of the Day, Kalupeteka, on trial, and convicted him to 28 years in prison, beyond the maximum sentence any individual can receive according to the Angolan penal code. As for the massacre itself, impunity prevailed. And the world looked the other way.

Impunity, fear and corruption have rendered Angolan society dysfunctional. I share one example with you, which is relevant to academia. Over the past 10 years, up to 17 universities, and over 40 other tertiary education institutions have mushroomed in Angola, but they lack academic quality and rigor. And on top of this, many students are unprepared. For instance, two youth activists who were very well known among youth protesters became informants for the state security in exchange for placements at the public university, even though they could not meet the basic admission requirements. It is dispiriting to be an academic in Angola due to the political pressures and the corruption of the system that has installed students and academics by political appointment.

When I received the invitation to deliver the Hormuud Lecture, I underscored that I am not an academic and do not have a PH.D. However, I took this opportunity to begin a conversation with academics. More often than not, foreign academics, journalists and political pundits dominate the analytical representations of Angola abroad. Among the scholars of Angola, the fundamental rights of people have yet merit due attention. That is why I am here.

I am a journalist by trade, and a human rights defender by consequence. I have dedicated my career to addressing the scourge of corruption and abuse of power because of the impact they have on what concerns me the most: human life, and human development in Angola. I bear witness to how life has become so cheap in my country.

There cannot be any serious conversation on human development or the body politics without addressing – in depth – the value of life in the country, and how it is protected or attacked by the powers that be and society at large.

Once, I entertained the idea of studying anthropology to become an academic, and I did so as a mature student. I held the belief that it would help me to analyze and better understand my own society rather than having the narrative of Angola being predominantly produced outside the country.

But I failed to reconcile my commitment towards rights with the demand to articulate fragments of reality within the discourses favored by academia.

Yet, three lessons from anthropology remain critical in the work I undertake nowadays. These are the primacy of rights, participant’s observation, and agency.

First, I treasure the advice of the codes of ethics of the Anthropological associations of the U.S and U.K that researchers have the primary responsibility in ensuring that the rights and the protection of the subjects of their study take precedence over those of and the interests of science.

I ask this audience, how do academics should respond and interact with the political and human rights contexts in countries such as Angola, where they do research? What are their duties and actions towards the places and people with whom they do research?

For instance, would these extrajudicial killings merit any academic interest? In the case of Angola, it could be argued that it would be a major safety issue for academics to delve into. It could also be argued that such cases might not be relevant to the study of politics or any trendy subject on Angola, like oil, the rise of the middle class or urbanism.

Thus, it would be suggested that major international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, investigate. Priorities, resources, visa issues and safety concerns would be tabled as major obstacles for such a job to be taken even by international organizations.

As for foreign journalists, it can be a challenge too. Let me share with you an anecdotal experience. In 2006 I published my second report on human rights abuses in Angola’s diamond fields. A Portuguese journalist, working for a mainstream international news agency, told me that he would not write about the report because, as he said, it was unscientific.

I had reported facts, the truth about widespread killings, torture and other abuses against locals by diamond companies. I did so based on the country’s legal framework that criminalized such practices. What scientific arguments were required to back up the facts, the truth and the laws of the land? Fortunately, the report received due international attention, and I even won the U.S. Train Foundation’s Civil Courage Prize that year. However, I kept wondering how it would have helped me if I had taken an academic approach, engaged in comparative analyzes, and had used only some of the evidence to back up my scientific arguments.

Second, on participant’s observation I came to interpret it differently. The areas covered in my report are home to more than half of Luanda’s seven million inhabitants. I provided ad-hoc training to as many as 15 local informants in the more critical neighborhoods to help me identify specific cases, and then focus the investigations on those ones until new ones called our attention.

One main ethical challenge that would not have arisen, had I just acted as a day-to-day journalist, was following up on executions that happened in real time, while investigating for the report. A colleague, who counseled me in the process, was of the view that I should publish the cases as I investigated them.

I had already done that with several cases, and had been met with a backlash of public support for the extrajudicial killings as a “good riddance” of criminals. I had also experienced the suffering of the police officer, Tiago Contreiras, whose colleagues had asked him to take a team to clean up the scene where they had just executed three young people. I reported how officer Contreiras refused to do the job, only to find out, minutes later, that one of the three his colleagues had executed was his own younger brother. Manuel Contreiras had traveled to Luanda to spend the weekend with his elder brother, the police officer, from Malanje, where he was a student and a devout Catholic. He asked for a ride at the wrong time. After my report was published, the bereaved officer was suspended, and the culprits given a free pass. It took a bitter follow up for him to be reassigned to a desk job.

By showing a pattern of psychopathic behavior within the Criminal Investigation Service, I believed and still do, that I would be able to counter the narrative sold to the public that the government is fighting crime the best way it can. What about the criminals that have plundered the state assets? Shall they be executed to? I ask in the report to make people see how extrajudicial killing is just a gruesome form of exclusion of the poor and pretty criminals.

Furthermore, by having tens of cases pieced together, those relatives and witnesses who have braved to speak out may have more protection. There will be many, way too many for the executioners to threaten or kill them. That is why, six months ago, I wrote a letter to the minister of Interior, Ângelo de Barros da Veiga Tavares, who also directly supervises the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC), about my investigations and the findings. This is not a lesson from academia, but one learned on the ground. I must follow up on these cases, on the witnesses and relatives as well as the identified executioners.

The minister of Interior, Ângelo Tavares, supervises SIC.

Finally, there is the lesson of agency. Over the years, I have witnessed how Angolans yearned for change, but one delivered to them and not as a result of their own actions. For me, the most challenging task was to contribute to change that perception and attitude by having the agency to be proactive.

Taking initiative

As Mr. João Lourenço was sworn in as president, last September, social media was abuzz with demands for him to enact change. But there has not been a single initiative worth mentioning of citizens organizing, and mobilizing to participate in the push for change to happen. Civil society remains dormant.

My work, which somehow has become multidisciplinary, has projected the need for agency. For instance, recently I was criticized for constantly reporting on the diamond-rich village of Cafunfo, in Northeastern Angola. The most recent writing I posted, weeks ago, was about the current death rate of five to eight children a day at the local public hospital due to malaria and lack of basics such as pills, syringes. The hospital even lacks electricity. The reason why there is always coverage on that village is because some local activists have learnt to have the agency to report on what they see wrong in their community, from health, human rights abuses to witchcraft.

So, my work has been possible for I have tapped into the bravery and courage of so many individual Angolans, because their rights have taken primacy in my work, first and foremost.

It is desirable that academics heed to the call of incorporating the issue of rights into their agendas on the work they do on Angola, and in other parts of Africa, as a new departure to really understand the continent and its people.

I thank you for your patience.

Next time, if I ever get invited again to an academic gathering, I will talk about my uncle, a healer, a witch doctor, a devout Christian who had members of the ruling elite as clients, and how his agency inspired me, in the first place, to study anthropology. It will be how he used his agency to stock up on dried codfish, which was essential in Angola, in the eighties and during hard times, for the ritual of Christmas celebrations left by the Portuguese. He wanted to take that back to his village to trade for cattle, but the long war caused his stock to rot over the years. He made concoctions for some of the generals and other high-powered people. He demanded, as part of the payment, three-piece suits for himself that had to be bought in Portugal, and good wine. My uncle would often call me to learn from his experiences, and I learned so much about his own and my family’s contradictions on their views of tradition and modernity. It was also a transforming lesson on the elite of my own country, and the agency a villager can have over the powerful based on his or her skills and local knowledge, even a dubious one.

And thus, we end on a more positive note.

Thank you so much.

Further reference

Graves III, W., and M. A. Shields (1991) “Rethinking moral responsibility in fieldwork: the situated negotiation of research ethics in anthropology and sociology”, in Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for a New Era, ed. C. Fluehr-Lobban, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 132-151.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a health emergency alert about a possible Zika outbreak in Angola, urging the Angola Ministry of Health to immediately begin implementing its planned interventions to minimize the impact. The WHO’s alert is particularly alarming because it is issued in response to a growing number of cases of microcephaly among newborns in Angola particularly in Luanda.

Microcephaly is a rare neurological condition in which an infant’s head is significantly smaller than the heads of other children of the same age and sex. Sometimes detected at birth, microcephaly is usually the result of the brain developing abnormally in the womb or not growing as it should after birth. An infected pregnant women can transmit Zika to her fetus, which can lead to brain abnormalities. As of 29 November 2017, a total of 42 cases of microcephaly had been reported, of which 39 occurred in live births and three were in stillbirths. 39 cases were identified in Luanda Province, especially in the southern part of the city. The other three cases came from Zaire Province, Moxico Province and Benguela Province.

The WHO’s alert is cautiously worded, saying that the reported cases of microcephaly in Angola may be caused by the Zika virus, which is transmitted by the same type of mosquito that transmits yellow fever. Zika can also be sexually transmitted from an infected man to a woman through intercourse. According to the WHO alert, Angolan health authorities have established that most of the microcephaly cases are coming from populations in lower socio-economic groups, in the suburbs of the Luanda; the same areas were most affected by the yellow fever outbreak of 2015-16.

The American government’s Center for Disease Control has published an alert that is less cautious in its assessment of the danger of Zika in Angola than the WHO’s. The CDC alert advises pregnant women not to travel to Angola, and, if a pregnant woman has a partner who lives in or has traveled to Angola or any other area with risk of Zika, either to use condoms or not to have sex for the rest of the pregnancy.  Zika symptoms can often be extremely mild, meaning that most of those infected do not know that they have been exposed to the virus.

A recent outbreak of Zika in Brazil caused more than 170,000 cases of microcephaly in 2016. The Brazilian outbreak provoked global concern, particularly because of the large numbers of people who traveled to Brazil for the 2016 Olympic Games. Brazil took aggressive actions to reduce the population of the mosquitoes (aedes aegypti) that transmit the virus. In May 2017, Brazil declared an end to its state of health emergency because the number of cases had dropped to around 7,000 in 2017. The Brazilian government said it would continue its assistance to children with microcephaly and to their mothers, and it actions to reduce the size of the Aedes population.

According to the WHO, the Angolan Ministry of Health is planning to take measures to reduce the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in order to minimize the risk of Zika virus transmission to humans. Angolan health authorities are reportedly enhancing Zika-related risk communication to the public, including the mobilization of local leaders and communities to increase participation in Zika control activities. Health authorities also intend to strengthen diagnosis, treatment and care at specially designated hospitals. Unfortunately, because of its weak public health system, Angola finds itself unable to deal with even commonly found diseases such as malaria. The Zika warning should therefore raise considerable concerns about the ability of the country to cope with this new threat.

The latest episode in the long-running saga of the alleged plunder of Angola’s public coffers has just come to light. Thanks to the diligence of British financial watchdogs and a change of regime in Angola, what is alleged to have been an attempt by the former President’s son to divert US $500 million, with his father’s blessing, looks to have been halted at the eleventh hour.

Full details of the alleged fraud have yet to be revealed, but information confirmed by separate sources indicates that the new Angolan President João Lourenço has taken steps to reclaim the funds which have been frozen pending the outcome of an international investigation. A spokesman for the UK’s National Crime Agency told us: “We can confirm that the NCA’s International Corruption Unit is investigating a case of potential fraud against the Angolan government.”

The NCA spokesman said they could not provide any further details at this time – which implies the investigation is active and ongoing. However, a source familiar with the information supplied by the British to Angola’s Unidade de Informação Financeira (UIF – the Financial Intelligence Unit) has revealed that it involves the transfer of US $500 million from the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA – the National Bank of Angola), personally approved by former President José Eduardo dos Santos, to the account of a beneficiary named as ‘Mais Financial Services’ at the London branch of Crédit Suisse.

Whose wealth?

José Filomeno dos Santos, known as Zenú, was his father’s appointee to head Angola’s sovereign wealth fund (the Fundo Soberano de Angola, FSDEA). The FSDEA, launched in 2011 with an initial capital of five billion US dollars, with annual injections of income from Angolan oil revenues, was to be invested in economic diversification for the good of the country. Instead the principal beneficiaries appear to have been the (former) presidential family and their business associates.

As Chairman of the Board, José Filomeno dos Santos, known as ‘Zenú’ entrusted the administration of the FSDEA investments to his associate, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, a Swiss-based financier with dual Swiss and Angolan nationality… and a previous conviction for financial crime.

This sent up an immediate red flag – after all, it is not often that a convicted felon is appointed to oversee a billion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. And, as time went by, evidence emerged that Mr Bastos de Morais was using this lucrative source of capital to enrich himself. Along with the revelations from the Paradise Papers, evidence emerged that the FSDEA funds were being consistently invested in an array of recently-registered new companies, which to no-one’s surprise were either directly owned by Mr Bastos de Morais or whose nominal owners were associates of his.

International corruption watchdogs and investigators swiftly concluded that the FSDEA was being used for personal enrichment. With Angola branded as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International, and with every branch of the state institutions filled with party members beholden to the ruling MPLA and its President, José Eduardo dos Santos, there was zero possibility of an internal investigation into what was, on the face of it, another instance of a greedy presidential family robbing the public purse.

President Dos Santos’s 38-year misrule was, however, about to end.

Having bled the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund dry, José Filomeno dos Santos turned to another “honey pot”: the Angolan Central Bank (BNA).

Last roll of the dice

In the final weeks of his presidency José Eduardo dos Santos summoned the then Governor of the National Bank of Angola (BNA), Valter Filipe, and the Finance Minister, Archer Mangueira, to MPLA headquarters. The President had just chaired a session of the ruling party’s Political Bureau beforehand.

Behind closed doors, the President gave each man a dossier to read there and then, and waited while they read through it. The dossier purported to be a proposal to put together an international credit line for Angola, worth some 30 billion US dollars – quite an astonishing turn of events given the financial crisis affecting the country at the time. A flurry of reports suggested the government was finding it increasingly difficult to convince their usual backers to lend them any more money and that the precipitous drop in oil revenues was already making it difficult to service their existing external debt, totalling somewhere between 37 and 43 billion dollars.

The President then called his son, José Filomeno dos Santos, ‘Zenú’ into the room and ordered both the Finance Minister and the BNA Governor to accompany ‘Zenú’ to London aboard a privately-chartered aircraft that very night to begin immediate negotiations to secure the credit.

Accompanying them aboard the chartered jet was Zenú’s childhood friend and business partner, Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião, Chairman of the Board of the Banco Pungo Andongo and also head of the National Council for Quality Control. Zenú and Jorge Sebastião already co-owned a business named Inpal (Investimentos e Participações Lda), which in turn held a 49% stake in Standard Bank Angola. At this stage they had not declared any link to the credit cartel.

Meeting in London with with the representatives of the cartel behind the credit proposal, operating as ‘Mais Financial Services’, Angolan sources say they were taken aback to find that both Zenú and Jorge Sebastião were acting as “members of the foreign team”, leaving the Angolan Minister and Bank Governor isolated as the sole representatives of the Angolan State.

The identities of the other participants at this meeting have not yet been revealed but a Portuguese weekly newspaper (Expresso) is reporting that three Brazilians were involved and two “are already in the hands of the British authorities“. According to ‘Expresso‘ the Brazilians were acting on behalf of a company named as ‘Perfect Brint’.

Curiously, there is no British-registered company named ‘Mais Financial Services’ registered with Companies House in the UK, but there is a ‘Mais Financial Services, Lda.’ registered in Luanda, Angola at the same address as ‘Investimentos e Participações, Lda.’, whose owners are the aforementioned President’s son, José Filomeno dos Santos (with 75%) and his lifelong buddy and business partner, José Gaudens Pontes Sebastião (with 25%).

To his credit, Archer Mangueira was unconvinced that ‘Mais Financial Services’ could possibly have sufficient clout to pull together a thirty-billion-dollar credit package from foreign investors. The amount was greater than Angola’s “pillar” of solvency – its current reserves.

For his part, Valter Filipe commented that he would refer the proposal for technical analysis before forming an opinion to convey to José Eduardo dos Santos.

On their return to Luanda, the Minister and Governor were supposed to draw up a report expressing their joint opinion on the proposal. However, Archer Mangueira prepared his individual opinion before calling on the BNA Governor to add his imprimature to it. Valter Filipe refused. His justification was that Mangueira had not called for a technical analysis but merely expressed a negative opinion.

The BNA Governor went on to arrange a meeting between the Bank’s technical analysts and José Filomeno dos Santos at BNA headquarters. Together they drew up their technical opinion which turned out to be in favor of the proposal.
Both opinions were sent to the President, who approved the document drawn up by his son and the BNA governor.

Archer Mangueira was said to have “lost the President’s ear”. His rival, Valter Filipe, gleefully claiming ascendancy, was ordered by the President to take charge of coordinating a commission to negotiate the line of credit. At this point the “British party”, i.e. ‘Mais Financial Services’, demanded as a financial guarantee that the BNA transfer US $500 million into their account.

This “financial guarantee” request was forwarded to President dos Santos for approval and he gave the green light. The BNA then proceeded with the transfer and Valter Filipe promptly sent the confirmation proof to the President.

The former governor of the Angolan Central Bank, Valter Filipe.

New broom

On August 23, 2017, João Lourenço was elected as the new Angolan President. A month later, President Dos Santos stepped down as head of state but remains president of the ruling MPLA. The country was relieved to see a peaceful transition of power, albeit within the same ruling party, with President Lourenço offering hope of a crackdown on the endemic corruption impoverishing the nation.

In his first meeting with the new President shortly after he was sworn in, Finance Minister Archer Mangueira briefed João Lourenço on the precarious state of the public finances, including the negotiations underway to obtain that US $30 billion, overseen by Zenú and Valter Filipe. Mangueira admitted he had been sidelined from the negotiations because of his lack of faith in the proposal.

João Lourenço summoned Valter Filipe and after questioning him, ordered that the dossier be handed over to Archer Mangueira. In the interim, the supposed international credit cartel brokers had issued another invitation to the Angolan delegation to meet in London to continue negotiations, the first such meeting since the US $500 million transfer.

When they discovered that it would be Archer Mangueira heading the government team, and not Valter Filipe, the credit brokers protested. They had been counting on José Filomeno dos Santos retaining the powers granted him by his father when he was in charge. They were to be disappointed.

On October 23, 2017, the parties gathered for the London meeting. On the Angolan side were Archer Mangueira, Valter Filipe, two Finance Ministry advisers and two BNA experts. As on the previous occasion, José Filomeno dos Santos and Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião took positions for the foreign team.

However, by then, Archer Mangueira had a trump card up his sleeve. He alone was privy to an alert from the British financial authorities. A notification had been sent to Angola’s Financial Information Unit (Unidade de Informação Financeira, UIF), which although it receives an operating budget from the BNA, reports directly to the Finance Ministry.

The British were politely inquiring about the legitimacy of the US $500 million transfer from the BNA to ‘Mais Financial Services’, given some procedural anomalies that had sent up a red flag.

Archer Mangueira kicked off the meeting by talking about the new President’s scrupulous regard for the rules and then left it to the Ministry’s financial experts to dissect the proposal and demonstrate how the credit agreement would not be to Angola’s benefit. The BNA Governor made a last-ditch attempt to salvage the deal, brandishing confirmation of the money transfer and recommending that they go ahead and fulfill the agreement.

The Finance Minister demurred, saying that he could not recommend to President João Lourenço any continuation of the negotiations. The very next day, October 24, Archer Mangueira conveyed this opinion to the President who summoned the BNA Governor to an audience on October 25.

Consequences

At that meeting, João Lourenço gave three quick commands to the central bank governor before wishing him luck. First: abort the operation, on the grounds of the lack of credibility of the foreign parties; Second: take immediate steps to have the US $500 million returned to Angola; Third: submit his resignation by October 27.

In disbelief, Valter Filipe (who in addition to his position as BNA governor was also a member of the MPLA central committee) tried to contact his party leader for instructions as to how to proceed – José Eduardo dos Santos. Clearly it was to no avail as Valter Filipe’s resignation was announced on October 27.

On November 10 João Lourenço removed Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião, from his position as Executive Secretary of the National Council for Quality Control (Conselho Nacional do Sistema de Controlo e Qualidade).

Two months later, on January 10, 2018, João Lourenço relieved José Filomeno dos Santos of his duties as President of the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund.

To date, no criminal investigations have been launched in Angola into the alleged conspirators, chief among them former president José Eduardo dos Santos. The US $500 million remain frozen in the United Kingdom.

Nearly two years ago, rumors began circulating in the Angolan capital, Luanda, that police officers working for the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) were routinely rounding up suspected petty criminals and killing them.

Human rights journalist Rafael Marques de Morais began an investigation, taking oral and written testimony from dozens of witnesses, family members, friends, and even from the occasional survivor. He says “Compelling testimony points to a systematic SIC death squad operation targeting young men merely suspected of undesirable or criminal behavior.”

Over a period of months, a clear pattern emerged with eye-witnesses naming individual police officers who had been seen to kill victims in broad daylight and in view of members of the public.  It was alleged that specific SIC units were acting as death squads with impunity.

“The SIC death squads are blamed for the summary executions of hundreds of young Angolans, without even a cursory investigation of the suspects, let alone due process.”

In April 2017 Rafael Marques de Morais shared the evidence he had amassed with the Angolan authorities at the highest level (the Interior Minister, Chief Commissioner Ângelo de Barros da Veiga Tavares; the General Commander of the National Police, Ambrósio de Lemos;  the Attorney-General, General João Maria de Sousa; the Chairman of the National Assembly, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos; and the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Rui Mangueira) requesting an investigation into the allegations of police involvement in a series of murders. He says: “Despite all the evidence, including detailed information, given to the Interior Minister and the other above-mentioned entities, to date we have not been informed of any investigation…”

Since then Angola has undergone a significant political transition – after 38 years in power, in which his administration became a byword for kleptocracy, José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down as President and João Lourenço was elected to succeed him.   There have been encouraging signs that the new administration aims to restore the rule of law.

Alarmingly, however, to this day none of the witnesses or family members of the victims has been contacted as part of any investigation. Also, the men identified as the perpetrators of the extrajudicial killings have neither been suspended nor removed from their jobs. Instead, in the Fall of 2017, the killing of young men suspected of gang membership or petty crime, started up again.

Now Rafael Marques de Morais has made available an updated report into these extrajudicial killings in English.  He cites 50 cases in which he was able to corroborate the facts from more than one source, involving 92 victims, only a few of whom survived. He says:  “Angola’s leaders, who themselves are accused of grand crimes but have yet to face no consequences, are the same men who have either ordered extrajudicial killings of criminals or – at the very least – turned a blind eye to the murderous interpretation of their exhortations to eliminate crime.”

Download the full report here

In the plunder that has been carried out in Angola, little has been said about the extraordinary role of Portuguese facilitators – especially bank executives, lawyers and intermediaries – in setting up related operations. Little is also said about the extremely harmful role they play in Angola, while pretending to be above reproach.

Maka Angola brings to light the US $518.5 million operation orchestrated in 2013 by José Fernando Faria de Bastos, a Portuguese lawyer living in Angola, and Rui Guerra, a Portuguese citizen and then-CEO of Banco Espírito Santo Angola (BESA).

Let us start on June 28, 2013. On that day, BESA carried out five credit operations to five shell companies totalling US $379 million. This operation financed the purchase of assets of Espírito Santo Commerce (Escom), 66 percent owned by the Espírito Santo Group (GES) of Portugal, and 30 percent by the Portuguese-Angolan citizen Hélder Bataglia. An addendum made in September of the same year to one of the credits raised the total amount to US $518.5 million. As BESA acknowledged in the approval of credits, each of the five companies had only one employee: José Fernando Faria de Bastos, the Portuguese lawyer.

The money made from the operation would then serve to repay Escom’s debt to BESA – 56 percent owned by the Portuguese bank Banco Espírito Santo (BES – now Banco Novo), which in turn was controlled by the Espírito Santo Group.

Why was this operation within the same group? BESA was consolidating its accounts with BES in Portugal. Escom’s high debt to BESA had to be reported to Portugal’s Central Bank (the Bank of Portugal) through BES Portugal and would appear in BES Group’s accounts as expired debt (impairments). According to financial analysts consulted by Maka Angola, BESA would have to make a provision on the total amount of Escom’s debt to cover losses. The BES Group’s report to the Bank of Portugal would have to be submitted on June 30, 2013. Hence the haste to purge more than half a billion dollars of debt from Escom, which you’ll remember was owned in part by GES, from BESA’s accounts. The total debt was over US $600 million.

The scheme established was used to cover the negative accounts of the Espírito Santo Group (GES), headed by the now disgraced banker Ricardo Salgado in Portugal, and at the expense of the Angolans.

On the same day of the bank transfers, June 28, 2013, BESA shareholders increased BESA’s capital by 500 million dollars. In the same meeting, the shareholders appointed the current ruling party MPLA Secretary-General, Paulo Kassoma, to be the Chairman of BESA, a position he holds in the renamed bank, now known as Banco Económico.

The five shell companies and FBL’s attorneys

On June 26, 2013, two days before the credits were granted, the following financial vehicles were created in Guiché Único de Empresas (the One-Stop-Shop for Companies):

• Casota – Administração em Investimentos e Bens Mobiliários e Imobiliários, S.A [Management in Investments, Movable Property and Real Estate];
• Enignimob – Administração em Investimentos e Bens Mobiliários e Imobiliários, S.A;
• Prismódico – Administração em Investimentos e Bens Mobiliários e Imobiliários, S.A;
• Schemata – Administração em Investimentos e Bens Mobiliários e Imobiliários, S.A;
• Urbanlab – Administração em Investimentos e Bens Mobiliários e Imobiliários, S.A.

These commercial companies were all created by five members of the reputed law firm Faria de Bastos & Lopes Advogados (FBL), with the same shareholder structure: José Fernando Faria de Bastos (sole manager of all companies), Victor Manuel Évora de Ceita, António José Caxita Marques, Laurinda Jacinto Prazeres Monteiro Cardoso and Anacleta Cipriano. Faria de Bastos and Vítor Ceita are founding members of FBL and, at the time, had António Caxita Marques and Laurinda Prazeres Cardoso as partners, and Anacleta Patrícia da Silva Cipriano as associate.

All companies were allocated the address of the FBL office at Rua dos Enganos, No. 1, 7th Floor, in Luanda as headquarters.

The clumsiness of the proposal and the granting of credit

In the documents consulted by Maka Angola, it is strangely noteworthy that the financing proposals appear in the bank’s system as having been submitted on January 21, 2012, a year and a half before the companies were created.

Yet, the applications for the financing of the five companies, signed by the sole manager José Fernando Faria de Bastos, were submitted to BESA on June 25, 2013, one day before the companies were legalized. As a guarantee, José Fernando Faria de Bastos mortgaged the properties that he would acquire.

On June 27, 2013, two days after receiving the proposal and one day after the companies were legally registered, the BESA manager granted the first five credits, worth US $379 million.

On the same day – June 27 – the real estate brokerage firm Proprime submitted the evaluation reports of the real estate assets and land to be acquired. Based on these reports, the management of BESA read and approved everything—a deviation from normal practice. Oddly, apart from the CEO Rui Guerra and executive board member Pedro Cruchinho of Portuguese nationality, BESA’s credit council members were not taken into consideration in these operations. The word “absent” is written in the credit grant where the Angolan members of the credit council should have signed.

Proprime is a company created by Progest – Technical Projects, Consulting and Management, Limited (Angola), in partnership with Prime Yield (Portugal). Progest is headed by Manuel Alfredo Resende de Oliveira, the first minister of Construction in Angola, appointed by Portugal during the transition government of 1975.

A source familiar with the process indicates the peculiarity of “a very large amount of credit having been granted in a single day, with no formalization of contracts nor verification of guarantees, and considering that interest and capital would only be paid three years later”.

On July 3, 2013, unaware of the fact that the credits had been granted and the funds disbursed, Clóvis Lara Martins Rosa, legal counsel from the Credit Risk and Control Department, sent his analysis of the credit requests for the five financial vehicles to BESA’s Executive Committee.

According to him, none of the five companies had presented the Diário da República [Government Daily Gazette] with information about their constitution as companies. In fact, none of them had been, as of the date, published in Diário da República, a requirement for a company to operate legally.

The sole manager of all five companies, José Fernando Faria de Bastos, had not even presented any personal identification documents. In addition, none of the companies presented minutes of shareholder deliberations to obtain financing with BESA.

Questions and answers

Several questions were sent to each of the main players in the operation, namely lawyer José Fernando Faria de Bastos, Rui Guerra (then CEO of BESA) and Hélder Bataglia (then chairman of Escom), but none replied. After the publication of the Portuguese version of this investigation, José Fernando Faria de Bastos sent his rebuttal, which was published in full.

“FBL Advogados, via some of its partners and lawyers, provided certain services to a client, including the incorporation of the companies referred to in the article published by Maka Angola, and the representation of these companies in the undertaking of certain formal acts,” says the statement.

The law firm claims that it “had no knowledge of any plan to defraud the interests of Banco Espirito Santo Angola or third parties and certainly did not plan or counsel any of its own clients in this regard.”

Furthermore, it continues, “neither FBL Advogados nor any of its partners or attorneys benefited, either directly or indirectly, from any financing, commission, compensation or any other advantage provided by Banco Espirito Santo Angola, whether or not related to the finances described in Maka Angola’s article. “

The acquisitions

1. Enignimob – US $260 million

Enignimob received funding of US $120 million as of June 28, 2013 (like all other companies) and an additional US $140 million in September of that year.

The financing was used to acquire shares in companies and two plots of land.

Thus, Enignimob acquired 100 percent of the shares of the Belavista Condominium owned by Escom. In fact, according to documents consulted by Maka Angola, this referred to the acquisition of a vacant lot of 198 acres in Belavista, in the coastal province of Benguela, for US $113.2 million.

Maka Angola knows that Escom bought this land for one million dollars from José Paulo Pinto de Sousa – known in “Operation Marquês” as the cousin of the former Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates – and that BESA was aware of the acquisition. Regardless, BESA financed a shell company to buy from Escom a piece of land 100 times more expensive than its real value, knowing that it would get the land for mortgage.

Moreover, the Proprime report assumes that it completed the evaluation on June 27, 2013, without ever having visited the site and based only on information provided by Escom. The report was signed by Portuguese citizens Francisco Barros Virgolino (now Prime Yield’s commercial coordinator in Portugal), as evaluator, and Nelson Rêgo as director general.

Another wasteland of five acres, in Luanda’s Talatona District, was valued at US $61 million and bought for that amount. This piece of land was also “stratospherically assessed by Proprime”, according to a source linked to the scheme. Nevertheless, the Proprime report assessed the land in Talatona at US $32.8 million. Additionally, according to documents collected by Maka Angola, this same land had been acquired by Escom for just over US $500,000.

“Regarding the properties referred to in the article, Proprime, as requested by the client, Escom, elaborated and produced a technical evaluation in accordance with the information provided by the Client”, says Proprime in a statement after the publication of the Portuguese version of the investigation.

According to the company, “all the evaluation reports were elaborated taking into account previous visits to the properties made by Proprime’s experts. It is therefore completely false that the properties, any of the properties, would have been evaluated without technicians having visited the site.”

“Proprime never knew about, and has no knowledge, nor was it required to know, of any financial operations related to the properties evaluated on the basis of the reports submitted. These reports explicitly state that prior to any actions being undertaken, all assumptions should be validated”, it stresses.

BESA granted Enignimob a loan of US $25 million for the acquisition of three apartments and 92 parking spaces in the Escom building in Cruzeiro.

Whereas the purchase of unspecified apartments in the Skycenter Building, one of the four of the Escom Towers, was made for US $19 million dollars, obviously paid for by BESA.

Other expenses include the acquisition of 21 percent in each of the three shell companies created by Escom, namely Urbantu, Neoinvest and Drina. This acquisition was made for an amount equal to US $3.6 million each, totalling close to US $11 million.

“There are doubts about the legal situation of each property and the encumbrances that may exist, as well as all the steps necessary to transfer property,” the source said.

2. Prismódico – US $117 million

BESA granted credit to this shell company to acquire apartments from Escom in the Aquaville Condominium in Talatona. As a guarantee, BESA mortgaged the referred property before purchasing it.

A view of the Acquaville Condominium, in the Talatona District.

On the day of approval of the contract, as in all other cases, Proprime prepared the assessment report of the property, worth US $171 million, free of any encumbrances or charges.

However, the property could not be sold as a complete unit because many apartments had already been marketed. According to Maka Angola, BESA knew that the initial value of the apartments available for sale by Escom did not exceed US $20 million.

According to the documentation consulted by Maka Angola, at the time of acquisition the Aquaville Condominium faced several problems due to delays in completion of the work. There were disputes with customers who had purchased apartments and debts from suppliers that had not been included in the valuation.

BESA’s jurist Clóvis Lara Martins Rosa notes the absence of any legal document relating to the apartments for sale in Acquaville, as well as the pre-contract agreement for them.

3. Urbanlab – US $82 million

Of the amount granted to Urbanlab, it arguably bought the world’s most expensive 32,291 square foot lot in the Condominium Quinta Rosalinda from Escom for US $54 million.

Initially, Escom reported to BESA that it had made a down payment of US $10 million for the land and that it still had to pay US $21 million. This same lot went from US $31 million to US $54 million in BESA’s accounts.

Regarding this transaction, BESA’s jurist questioned the absence of a contract for the assignment of the land, the land registration certificate, location sketch, building permit, and architectural and engineering projects.

The Quinta Rosalinda Condominium, where a lot cost US $54 million.

As for the apartments in the Skycenter Building, one of the three Escom towers, the information available at the time was also lacking – no pre-contract agreement, no property cadastre certificate, nor an up-to-date property registration certificate.

4. Casota – US $53 million

The bank loan was used to acquire a plot of land in Talatona and 33 percent of the company Imolap – Sociedade Imobiliária Lar do Patriota, Lda., which belongs to Escom. Casota gave as guarantees the properties that it would acquire with the loan.

However, the following information on the land was also non-existent: the contract for the assignment of the land, land registry certificate, location sketch, building permit, and architectural and engineering projects.

As for the shares in Imolap, the situation was no better. There was no transfer of share contract, nor general assembly minutes with the record of the decision to transfer said shares.

5. Schemata – US $6.5 million

Thirty five percent of the capital of two ghost companies of Escom’s – Turizaire and Zaimob – were acquired for a total value of USD $5.37 million and USD $377,000. The remaining USD $231,000 served as commission.

Shares in these companies were sold without a share transfer contract nor general assembly minutes with the decision of transfer for such shares. According to documents consulted by Maka Angola, neither the identification documents of the representatives of these companies nor their commercial registration certificates were presented.

The legal point of view

According to the opinion of a legal counsel who prefers anonymity, the granting of more than half a billion dollars of credits, as described above, corresponds to several crimes of fraud “foreseen and punishable by articles 450 and following of the Angolan Penal Code”.

According to this legal counsel, all parties, including his fellow lawyers from Faria de Bastos & Lopes Advogados (FBL), “could have committed the crime of fraud in any of its forms and degrees of co-participation.”

The crime of fraud is characterized by the intention to obtain unjust enrichment for oneself or for a third party, by means of a mistake or deceit about facts astutely provoked to lead others to practice acts that cause them or another person property damage.

For the legal counsel, there was no reason for the bank to grant loans to recently established companies with no credit history or reputation in the market.

The loss for the bank and unjust enrichment amounted to USD $518.5 million.

According to him, a brief analysis of the case confirms the presence of typical elements of fraud.

My trial has begun. I am standing on the dock accused of two crimes for nearly four hours straight. It is my punishment for not exercising. Now I feel the pain in my back.

Under the Law on Crimes against State Security, I am accused of an outrage against a sovereign body, the former President José Eduardo dos Santos. The second crime is of insult against a public office holder, the former Attorney General João Maria Moreira de Sousa. Both carry a maximum sentence of four years.

The courtroom is packed. Judge Josina Mussua Ferreira Falcão notes how disrespectful the former attorney general and his counsel have been. For the second time, they submitted a last minute request to postpone the trial sine die (without a set date), and this time with an unreasonable justification. The judge decides to go ahead with the trial without the plaintiff or his counsel.

The public prosecution starts by requesting that the trial’s proceedings be held in camera (without audience). Judge Josina Mussua Ferreira Falcão decides that there are no secrets in the case, and orders the audience to stay.

She toughens up and delivers her warnings before the proceedings begin. She starts with the journalists. They are free to take images and record the opening statements, except her image. “Do not dare”, she stresses. Second, the audience must be quiet, very quiet otherwise they will be thrown out of the court. To the defense lawyers, she wants them to stick to the facts. No politics. Then it is my turn. She heard my interview saying this third trial of mine will be another kangaroo court, a circus. She wants to know from me her role and mine in the circus. I give her mine, the animal always forced to jump through rings of fire. She smiles and wants to know whether I am a lion or a monkey. She demands respect for the court, the justice system and herself. I point out the injustices of the system she represents. Judge Falcão does not want to be mixed up.

The judge is exhaustively clear. She only wants to hear about the three acres plot of land. At some point I make the case of being on trial for the very serious crime against state security, against my country, and what does a plot of land have to do with it?

Well, it should have been all about the three acres of beachfront land, more than 350 kilometers south of the capital Luanda, in the fishing town of Porto Amboim.

The professional habit of sniffing out corruption led me to investigate how the then-Attorney General João Maria Moreira de Sousa had obtained an official title deed for the three acres in his private capacity as a real estate developer.

A careful reading of the administrative procedures revealed gross irregularities that indicated the local administration had favored the attorney general. For instance, on May 12, 2011, the provincial governor of Kwanza-Sul, José Maria do Prado, issued an edict for people to lay claims on the land or any grievances regarding it within 30 days. However, 13 days later, the same governor and the attorney general both signed the title deed for the land which could still be disputed.

Nevertheless, the farmers who previously occupied the land were evicted without compensation.

Now the plaintiff argues in the case that he lost the title deed because he did not pay the dues, and that he did not want to compensate the peasants. Another line of his argument is that he wanted to build a family condo for leisure.

How did he receive the title deed without paying the dues? How could the local authorities destroy the subsistence farming of several peasants for the leisure of the attorney general and his family? How could three acres be granted for leisure? These are the questions I am looking forward to having answered in court.

But in my writing, published on November 3, 2016, I focused on the fact that the attorney general, according the constitution and relevant laws, is bound by exclusive duty. He could not engage in private business dealings, except academia, and relevant research. Building a condominium in a three acre plot was an enterprise that infringed on the said laws. The whole process was tantamount to corruption.

Dealing with the powerful requires extra care. On October 10, 2016, 23 days before I published the story, I submitted 13 questions to the office of General João Maria de Sousa regarding the three acres. I had a copy of the questionnaire officially stamped by his office as evidence that I had sought his answers. Of course, there was no response.

Then, I added context to the story. I had written about General João Maria de Sousa’s private business ventures. For years he simultaneously wore two hats both as Attorney General and managing director of two private companies, Imexco and Prestcom. That was unconstitutional because such businesses in which he was a significant shareholder had dealings with the state. In 2009, I went as far as writing to the president about such a glaring violation of the laws. Mr. José Eduardo dos Santos ignored my letter, but I kept a copy of it signed by his office.

Based on this evidence, I wrote that the attorney general continued to abuse his office because he enjoyed the protection of the president. “The loyalty and support of the President’s appointees is secured by allowing them swill at the same trough”, I stated.

This reference of Mr. Dos Santos served to indict me for the crime against state security.

On December 27, 2016, after I had enjoyed a Merry Christmas, the Criminal Investigation Service called me in for interrogation. I was charged with defamation and insult to the attorney general. I submitted the documentary evidence that backed up my writing.

That is when the creative attorney general’s staff came up with new charges by using the Law on Crimes against the State Security to circumvent the evidence. There was no longer any mention of the Media Law in the accusation against me.

To keep me company, General João Maria also prosecuted the director of the fortnight weekly newspaper “O Crime”, Mariano Brás, who printed my exposé.  Other local outlets also reproduced and disseminated the article, as several always do with my texts.

Mariano Brás’ defense is solely based on reiterating that he only reprinted the article, and does not understand why he is being dragged to court. I take full responsibility for my writings, and made it clear as well that I have no authority over any journalist or outlet that disseminates my texts. Then, the judge and the prosecution pick on the story’s headline, which Mariano had changed from the original “involved in corruption” to “accused of corruption”, and it turns into an ugly test of semantics and knowledge of the Portuguese language.  Then he is informed that he is being prosecuted precisely for the changed headline. Whatever.

However, the political situation in the country registered some changes after the August 2017 elections, in which General João Lourenço was ushered in as the successor to Mr. Dos Santos’ 38 years grip on power. The new leader’s motto has been the fight against corruption. Well, I have been at the forefront of exposing it and have been permanently under fire by the power holders.

Last December, President Lourenço relieved General João Maria de Sousa of his duty. Now he is having trouble showing up in court to face the facts.

The trial continues on April 16. Now I want to see General João Maria Moreira de Sousa in court. It will be a great day!

Why does the president of the Republic, João Lourenço, allow his government to be tarnished with fabricated accusations regarding the supposed attempted murder of his vice-president in the first months of his term? Why would the president allow the National Police and the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) to use a machete as an official torture tool? Why does the president allow the judicial system, especially SIC, to be so inhumane, specializing in forging absurd evidence and incarcerating innocents? Why does João Lourenço allow the involvement of staff members of the Security House of the Presidency in an act of torture to go unpunished?

Let us turn to the facts. Five citizens, detained more than a month ago, are accused of the attempted murder of vice-president Bornito de Sousa. The accusation was concocted from a banal discussion about parking the car which the five were in. They were barbarously tortured, filmed in possession of ridiculous “evidence”, and then forced to sign confessions under threat of death.

Vice-president Bornito de Sousa is a lawyer and a law professor.

Who are the five “commandos”?

On February 3rd, bricklayer Pedro Afonso Miguel “Baby”, 34, from Uíge, asked his accounting technician neighbor Baião Conceição Mendonça, 55, to give him a ride.

According to his testimony, provided to Maka Angola, Pedro Afonso Miguel had the possibility of doing a one-off job at the Jardim de Rosas [Rose Gardens] Condominium, in the Camama zone in Luanda, opposite the Institute of Police Science. He and Mendonça left the neighborhood Cassequel Cantinton, where they live, in a Mitsubishi L200.

On the way, Baião Mendonça spoke on the phone with a fellow colleague from Malanje, electrician Morais Joaquim Muxibi, 52, with whom he had worked at the provincial branch of the Ministry of Construction in Malanje.

Muxibi was returning from Talatona, where he had done a one-off job as a self-employed worker. The electrician, a Jehovah’s Witness, was about to go to a religious service in a place near his new home in the Calemba II neighborhood. “Baião wanted to see my new home. We arranged to meet at the Camama roundabout. He explained that first we would go together to drop his neighbor at the Jardim de Rosas Condominium and then we would go to Calemba,” said Muxibi.

When they were already near the Garden of Roses, Baião Mendonça saw another colleague of his, bricklayer Domingos João Caputo, 39. The latter was accompanied by another bricklayer Nelito Cambari Tunguno, a native of Kwanza Sul. Caputo and Tunguno were returning from a construction site nearby, where they worked.

“Mr. Baião stopped to greet his friend Caputo and asked us where we were going. We said we were going to Camama. He offered us a ride. He said that he was also on his way to Camama, but that he had to drop a friend at the Jardim de Rosas,” explained Nelito Tunguno.

Bricklayer Pedro Afonso Miguel “Bébé”.

The Garden of Roses

Around 5:00 p.m., Baião Mendonça entered the condominium and complied with the entrance protocols; registration of the vehicle, identification and a confirmation phone call to the host.

“Baião could not find the street, although he followed the explanations they gave us. So, he chose to stop. He parked the car where there was space and asked me to call Mr. Manuel (the host in the condominium), to pick us up where we were,” said Pedro Miguel.

As soon as they parked, a guy in a tie knocked on the driver’s door. “He asked us if we knew where we had parked. Mr. Baião replied that there were no cones or signs there [to block parking],” explained Pedro Miguel.

Baião Mendonça explained: “As there was no understanding between myself and the security guard, I asked him to call the police, to see who was right. I had parked the car on a public road and there were five more cars parked in the same lane.”

The National Police officers from Police Outpost Bom Sucesso rushed to the scene and found the five occupants inside the car. None of them had left the car until the police arrived.

To clarify the situation, Pedro Miguel called his contact at the Jardim de Rosas and asked him to come and explain the situation to the National Police officers. During that phone call, “the police began to insult the man, to call him son of a bitch and claim he had put bandits inside the condominium to commit assaults.”

“The police threatened Mr. Manuel, our contact, so that he would not show up at the place”, reported the detainee.

The National Police officers ordered the occupants to exit the car and handcuffed them. They searched the car and found “a new car battery, scissors, and plastic bags.” The men were all taken to the police station.

The accountant Baião Mendonça.

The torture

At the police station, after a brief warm-up with slaps and kicks, the guards progressed to torture. Pedro Miguel described the experience: “They put me in the ‘airplane’ position. They handcuffed my wrists to my ankles, behind my back, and lifted me by the handcuffs, stretching my arms, chest, and legs from behind. Then I was beaten with a machete on the back and on the buttocks. Due to the pain, I could not tell how many times. I got beaten more than twenty times. After an hour of torture, I was put in a cell.”

According to Pedro Miguel, it was past 10:00 p.m. when his executioners returned and removed the detainees from the cell, going ahead with a new torture session. “They came with a rusty Kalashnikov gun, with no magazine, and began to torture us again with the ‘airplane’ system and with machete beatings on the back and buttocks.”

Domingos João Caputo explained that at the police station, they were informed that they had parked the car in front of the private residence of Vice-President Bornito de Sousa.

“The police officers told us that because of the lack of respect, because we had parked in front of the vice president’s house, we really had to get beat up,” Caputo said. “I was the first one to receive slaps. But the real torture began after 10:00 p.m.”

Also handcuffed in the ‘airplane’ position, Caputo described: “I was beaten more than thirty times with the side of the machete on the buttocks. I stopped screaming. I could no longer feel any pain. I was just telling them to kill me and that my crime was that I got a ride [from a friend].”

According to this statement, the commander of the police unit, sub-inspector Cátia Bonifácio, who witnessed the torture, ordered it to end. “The subordinates continued to beat us, saying that we, the ‘rogues’, had to find out who owned the gun they had found in the condominium sewer,” Caputo continues.

Baião Mendonça described the police officers’ violence, which was not limited to ‘airplane torture’ and the use of the machete, but continued with kicks in the face: “I was injured with lots of punching, and I had blood in my eyes for a while.”

Morais Muxibi was also whipped more than twenty times on the buttocks with the side of the machete, “punched in the face and kicked everywhere.”

Nelito Tunguno suffered similar punishment. In addition to the aforementioned ‘airplane torture’: “They [the police officers] did not want to know the truth. The more we told the truth, the more we were tortured.”

“When the commander saw that the torture was too much, she ordered her subordinates to stop so we would not be killed there,” continued Pedro Miguel.

The evidence concoction

Baião Mendonça described his astonishment when, after 10:00 pm, he saw the police officers arriving to get them out of the cell. “They told us they found a gun in the sewer. The gun did not even have a magazine and it was all rusty. Then they created a new version and claimed to have found the gun in the car. They also brought one more knife and a hammer,” he says.

Caputo corroborated: “The gun was dry. And how could we have found open sewage in the condominium to lay the gun there, if we could not even find the house we were headed to?”

Morais Muxibi added that the National Police and the SIC officers “later invented that there was a sixth man among us who escaped with the gun magazine.”

The pictures

Armed with forged “evidence,” and after the torture session, the officers then proceeded to a photographic session of the suspects wielding the “guns” used for the “attack” on Vice-President Bornito de Sousa.

Pedro Miguel “Baby” is the one who described Baião Mendonça’s misfortune: “As the torture was too much, he agreed to take the gun so that they could photograph him holding it. He had not yet been interrogated and continued to be tortured. ”

“The officers gave me their machete to hold for the photograph – the same one they used to torture me. This was now my murder weapon against the vice-president,” continued Pedro Miguel.

Morais Muxibi did not escape the staging either: using the bag where they had placed the battery found in the vehicle, “the policemen put the gun inside it that they had first given Baião to hold, and then they photographed me.”

When his turn arrived, Domingos Caputo recounted: “They forced me to hold a hammer, as proof of the tool that I used to attack the vice-president. And they photographed me holding it. I could not refuse after so much torture. The beating with the machete was too much.”

Nelito Tunguno was forced to hold a bunch of plastic bags (blue and transparent striped bags, usually used to sell bread in bakeries) as photographic evidence. “The police said the bags were to be used to cover the faces of the vice-president’s relatives before we hurt them,” he said.

“The commander was present, dressed as a civilian with a bubú [traditional Angolan dress], and she witnessed the photo session and the next torture session,” added Caputo.

We are therefore facing a typical movie produced by SIC’s and the National Police’s imagination. The plot? Three bricklayers, an electrician and an accounting technician threaten state security by carrying out an assassination attempt on the vice-president. Just like Rambo, all they need is a rusty gun with no magazine, a machete, a hammer, a knife, and plastic bags.

In 2015, a group of 15 youngsters who were discussing a book about non-violence in a bookstore were arrested during their meeting and accused by the then attorney general, General João Maria de Sousa, of planning a coup and the assassination of then President José Eduardo dos Santos. Here, again, the indictment was typical of a MPLA state security fiction script: the youngsters were supposedly going to burn tires near the presidential palace to drive the president away with the smoke, and then seize power.

In step the soldiers of the Security Office

The following morning, six soldiers in uniform appeared in the police station identifying themselves as belonging to the Security Office of the President of the Republic and Military Counterintelligence.

“The soldiers accused us of trying to assassinate vice-president Bornito de Sousa. They shouted: ‘You want to kill our vice-president!’,” explained Pedro Miguel.

“One of the soldiers pushed me aside and promised to help me if I told him the truth. When I began to speak the truth, he beat me up, because I did not say what he wanted to hear,” said Domingos Caputo.

At that time, according to Baião Mendonça, the police officers showed more proof: “They brought a magazine for the weapon they claimed was ours. The previous day we had asked how it would be possible to carry out any action with a weapon with no magazine.”

The five detainees were then transported in a GMC van, used exclusively by the Presidential Guard Unit (UGP).

Nelito Tunguno added a detail that would be funny if the situation were not tragic: “The men from the UGP took pictures of us and put them on Facebook.” But the worst was what happened next: “They laid us under the benches [of the van] and took us to the National Police Division Command in Talatona. On the way, they trampled on our heads, ribs, and whole bodies with their boots. They gave us punches, slaps and kicks.”

Domingos João Caputo felt particularly aggrieved about the humiliation inflicted by the military men working for the president’s Security House, since he has a military background at the service of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA): “In 1998, with the 18th Regiment, I fought in Boma, Matadi and Muanda in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1999, I was on the battle fronts of Lunji, Catabola, Nharea and Chipepa. I left the army in 2000, after being wounded in combat and evacuated to Luanda. Now I’m being treated like an animal.”

Bricklayer Nelito Cambari Tunguno.

SIC-style confession

But the reports of torture and abuse do not stop here: when they were already in the National Police Division Command in Talatona, the soldiers continued to kick the detainees, punch them and slap them. Pedro Miguel told us: “We were told: ‘speak the truth and we will free you.’ They demanded our confession, as if we had really attempted to assassinate the vice-president.”

According to the victims, the soldiers only put an end to the beating when the unit commander arrived at the scene.

Domingos Caputo stated: “I signed my confession without having read it, as the SIC investigator demanded. There was excessively heavy torture. I could not refuse. I was afraid to die. The SIC investigator, the light-skinned and strong one, told us that he would put us into a toxic prison where we would die. ”

Morais Muxibi also asserted his weakness: “I was afraid to die. I signed the confession without reading it. The torture was too much, even here in the Talatona Division with the prosecutors nearby.”

“I was being beaten, I signed it too. I was afraid. I don’t even know how we were alive here in jail. These men lie and kill,” said Nelito Tunguno.

After being interrogated, Baião Mendonça asked the SIC investigator to read his statements before signing them. Here’s what happened: “So began my great torture, right there in the National Police Division in Talatona. I took so many blows to the head from several officers that I lost my senses. I refused to sign it. I ended up not signing anything. The investigator tore up the information he had produced as mine. Finally, we were heard by the prosecutor [José Rodrigues] Cambuta, who formalized our detention.”

Bricklayer Domingos Caputo.

The unofficial version 

A source close to Bornito de Sousa told Maka Angola that the vice-president was on a private visit to Portugal on the day of the alleged attack. “When we heard about an attack via social media, we initially thought that it had happened in Portugal, where he was. He does not even live there [at the Jardim de Rosas]. He owns the house and goes there from time to time, sporadically,” said the source.

The source went on to say: “The matter is being addressed by SIC and we have tried to get an understanding of what happened. According to the police report, one of the vice-president’s security guards questioned one of the individuals and they fled. The security guard realized that there was something strange and he went to get a gun. By then the [five] men had already been intercepted at the entrance of the condominium. This happened at 10:00 p.m. This is the version we have. We contacted the Interior Ministry and the National Police, and they presented us with this version. To this day, we are waiting to see how SIC is going to investigate the issue. SIC is the one that must clarify what happened. It’s strange that a group of construction workers went to work at the condominium at that time of the day.”

Yet, let us see: according to the initial explanation of the detainees, they were taken to the police station before 6:00 p.m., which refutes the version of the Interior Ministry and the National Police.

Even so, the source linked to Bornito de Sousa was surprised to learn that the five detainees were barbarically tortured with machetes and beaten up by police authorities and SIC.

“There is no activity in the vice-president’s office that corresponds to this attitude. Someone, to justify an excess, some inappropriate behavior, did this. The vice-president has does not behave like this. He is very simple and has nothing to do with this violence,” said the source.

Another government source simply said that the accusation “is fanciful”: “We have heard about it and we do not get involved in such things. We have absolutely nothing to do with this matter. ”

Reactions

A general, under anonymity, said that he was aggrieved by the way “a misunderstanding because of a parking lot” developed. He emphasized that “these accusations only embarrass the Angolan state, especially the generals who live in the condominium. The accused did not even know who lives there.”

“If the vice-president were at the condominium, these men would not even have been allowed in. He does not live there at all. We must stop inventing these confusions,” asserted the general.

Openly, the relatives of the detainees also said:”My father has been a Jehovah’s witness for many years. He will not even touch a gun. For more than ten years, until 2015, he worked as an electrician at Griner,” explained Estêvão Morais, son of Morais Muxibi.

José Miguel, brother of Pedro Miguel “Baby”, was definitive when stating “the falseness of the accusation”: “My brother was never a soldier to attack a high representative of the nation. How could he do it without military training, without any knowledge about arms, with nothing? An attack at this level would have to involve generals.”

“I live with my brother. We have a very open relationship and he has never had a gun at home. How could he attack the vice-president’s house with a hammer or a machete in his hand, with all the security the vice-president has?”, asked Felipe, Domingos Caputo’s brother. “In the movies there is film editing, special effects. Reality is not like that.”

How can SIC investigate this case with seriousness and transparency, a case in which, using its privileged method – torture with a machete – it has forged evidence?

Investigation published, detainees released

The construction workers, transformed into “commandos”, were released on bail the day the original of this text, in Portuguese, was published.

Yet, the public prosecution trumped up new charges of crime of illegal possession of weapon against the five, thus continue to improvise on the absurdity.

José Filomeno dos Santos (son of former presidente José Eduardo dos Santos, known as Zenú), and the former governor of the National Bank of Angola, Valter Filipe, were indicted two weeks ago by the Attorney General’s Office for their involvement in the 500-million-dollar fraud.

This refers to the transfer last September of 500 million dollars from the National Bank of Angola to an account with Crédit Suisse in London as a guarantee for a supposed funding of 30 billion dollars.

In fact, as already investigated by Maka Angola early in January the operation would turn out to be a fraud against the Angolan State that was carried out by José Filomeno dos Santos. To carry it out, he used his dummy company, Mais Financial Services. London’s financial authorities suspected the fraud and blocked the funds in London.

The referred transfer led to the resignation, on October 27, of the then governor of the National Bank, Valter Filipe.

Nevertheless, according to Maka Angola’s investigation, the entire operation was authorized by then President José Eduardo dos Santos, illicitly favoring his son Zenú and accomplice, namely Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião.

Ultimately, it was the then head of state, José Eduardo dos Santos, who ordered Valter Filipe to transfer the 500 million dollars.

Maka Angola will soon publish an English version of the detailed account of this whole scam (here in Portuguese).

Before agreeing to step aside after 38 years in power, Angola’s former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, made sure he obtained guarantees of permanent immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed during his time in office.

For Angola’s ruling party MPLA and lawmakers, it was a pragmatic necessity: how else could Dos Santos be persuaded to step aside? The man had an international reputation as one of Africa’s most zealous kleptocrats, using his position to enrich himself and his extended family.

Six months on, however, a complex international investigation into an attempted US $1.5 billion fraud involving his son José Filomeno dos Santos “Zenú” has put Angolans openly discussing whether the Dos Santos family en masse should have those immunity guarantees removed. His son is firmly in the sights of criminal investigators who have documentary evidence that it was his father who oversaw the attempted scam.

The Weakest Link

As the son of Angola’s long-serving President, José Filomeno dos Santos (familiarly known as ‘Zenú’) was put in charge of Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, a multi-billion dollar reserve intended to set aside some of today’s oil revenues for the carbon-depleted future.
With every passing year, suspicion grew that his management of the Sovereign Fund was inept, if not criminal.

Then late in 2017 the British financial authorities detected a suspicious high-stakes money transfer attempt via London and tipped off the Angolans. The case has proven explosive, involving Angolan Central Bank (Banco Nacional de Angola – BNA) monies being siphoned off into private companies owned by Zenú and his associates, as reported extensively by Maka Angola.

Zenú was fired from his official positions and along with the Governor of the Angolan Central Bank (Valter Filipe, not only lost his job but has now been indicted for his part in the alleged fraud. And as investigations continue in at least two countries (Angola, and the UK), there are indications that responsibility for the attempted diversion of state funds may involve the former President himself.

José Filomeno dos Santos ‘Zenú’

Just two months before he was due to leave office, President José Eduardo dos Santos convened a meeting with his Finance Minister and the governor of BNA to study a proposal for a US $30 billion credit, allegedly being put together by an international cartel of financiers.

Somewhat implausibly, the proposal had been prepared by a shell company named Mais Financial Services (MFS) which just happened to be owned by his son, Zenú. The President allegedly ordered his officials to accompany Zenú to London that very night to discuss the proposal with the international partners. Accompanying them on the private jet to London was Zenú and his partner in MFS, his childhood friend and business associate, Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião.

MFS had proposed raising US $30 billion in the international financial market to support economic diversification via a State Strategic Investment Fund (for which the Portuguese acronym is FIE). It would also allow for “the provision of foreign currency equivalent to US $300 million a week” to the BNA, as well as the refinancing of Angola’s foreign debt.
Such a large line of credit would, naturally, require government guarantees, usually in the form of a memorandum of understanding issued by the government in question.

Unusually, in this case, the guarantee required would be for the BNA to deposit, in advance, US $1.5 billion to the consortium via Mais Financial Services and its UK partner Resource Conversion.

Resource Conversion is a UK-registered company, formerly known as Kapital Mines plc. It was set up in 2011 as a company “specializing in waste management and remediation services” with assets valued at US $12.8 million. One of its directors, a Dutch national with the impressively long name of Hugo Anthonie Folke Godfried Reinier Onderwater, who is listed as resident in Portugal, was their representative at the London meeting. An agricultural engineer, Mr Onderwater, is also listed as a company director of Nisko Construction and Project Services, which conveniently for him shares the same address as Resource Conversion (Suite A 6 Honduras Street, London, EC1Y 0TH), which was also the seat of Kapital Mines plc prior to its 2011 name-change.

According to Zenú’s friend and business associate, Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião,
who wrote a formal letter to BNA on June 27, 2017, the “banking syndicate… refused to proceed on the basis of a memorandum of understanding alone”. The syndicate (allegedly comprising Bankinter from Spain, BNP Paribas from France, Deutsche Bank from Germany, HSBC from the UK the ICBC from China and Sumitomo from Japan) required a “service agreement” to be set up between the Angolan Central Bank and MFS.

To anyone with the slightest understanding of global finance, this was laughable. As one international financier explained to Maka Angola:
“Generally, when contracting consortia to acquire financing for their countries through Finance Ministries, each nation state will always mandate an international bank of outstanding reputation to set up and lead the banking syndicate.”

For example, the Angolan state oil giant Sonangol has regularly and directly used Standard Chartered Bank to organize bank syndicates to raise capital for its operations.

From start to finish the MFS proposal included a number of preposterous statements, e.g. that the company would only “propose a financial viability study to BNA when the dialogue with the banking syndicate is initiated” and “as the study had not yet been formally contracted, this was why the proposal still bore the seal of Mais Financial Services”.

Similarly, that “the funds raised would have to be managed by a company ‘with highly specialized management’ and to that end they would hire another company named Mais Financial Engeneering” (sic) (spelled exactly like this, poorly written in English, since the correct form would be Engineering), also conveniently created by Zenú.

Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, Zenú’s company was billing BNA approximately US $16 million for MFS’s alleged “technical and financial consultancy” in ensuring US $1.5 billion would come their way.

A Chip off the old Block

No-one who knows Zenú in person credits him with being the brains behind this ludicrous scheme, even though he stands accused of many other allegations of corruption and diversion of funds during his reign as the chairman of the board of the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

From the information available, the signs point higher.

Just weeks away from the end of his 38 year reign, President dos Santos orders the National Bank of Angola to “insistir nos esforços” (persist in its efforts) to ensure the success of his son’s proposal. He responds to an official communication from the BNA Governor reporting back on the London meeting with an authorization of the ‘Asset Allocation and Management Agreement’ on August 10, 2017 – barely two weeks before the election of his successor.

On the same day that the BNA governor, Valter Filipe, goes ahead and signs the agreement with MFS and Resource Conversion, these two ‘dummy’ companies fronting the so-called consortium form a new entity named “MFS and Resource Partnership Project Ltd.”

The BNA then proceeds to transfer a first tranche of US $500 million (of the 1.5 billion requested) to the bank account in London specified by MFS. Maka Angola was initially told that the US $500 million being sent over by the BNA as the first tranche involved an account with Credit Suisse. Sources in London now say that MFS had produced a bank guarantee allegedly issued by Credit Suisse as evidence of their liquidity. The sources state categorically that this was a fake.

Subsequent information suggests that the BNA made the US $500 million transfer to the account of a mysterious third party, Perfectbit, whose stated assets held by HSBC in London were equivalent to a mere US $790. Sources say the director of Perfectbit, a Brazilian national named Samuel Barbosa da Cunha, the account trustee, has since been arrested by the British authorities.

‘Zenu’s’ scam

Maka Angola has been told: “There is no instance of a country’s central bank ever hiring asset managers, much less domestic ones, to act as intermediaries in proving liquidity or asset availability”. But then again “ it is even more ridiculous to suggest that management companies would serve as intermediaries to set up banking syndicates to issue sovereign debt and/or financing to a state.”

Schemes and Scams

A legal expert consulted by Maka Angola examines the details of what is known so far and gives an ‘off the record’ opinion: “the acts described and attributed to José Filomeno dos Santos (Zenú) and Jorge Gaudens Pontes Sebastião are consistent with criminal association, falsification, fraud, influence-peddling and money-laundering – all crimes that are punishable under the Angolan penal code.”

Apparently the Angolan authorities investigating this ridiculous attempt to loot the Angolan treasury agree. Zenú is now facing charges and has had to surrender his passport.

Given the existence of first-hand documentary evidence that the MFS scheme was approved by the then President, José Eduardo dos Santos, the latter’s immunity against criminal prosecution may not save him. Immunity could be set aside, though this would be for the country’s parliament to determine.

However, specialists who follow Angolan politics say Dos Santos may have hoped that by retaining his role as president of the ruling MPLA party, he could be a ‘Putin’ to President João Lourenço’s ‘Medvedev’ – the real power behind the titular office-holder. Instead, his successor is proving to be no puppet and Lourenço’s carefully-calculated moves against the most egregiously corrupt members of the previous regime are winning him popular support. It’s possible that Dos Santos could avoid being brought to justice if he were to submit all authority to President Lourenço, step down from the MPLA and abandon political life altogether. It’s equally possible that he may yet find there are no guarantees to save him from the consequences of decades of looting his country’s coffers for his family’s personal gain.

*D. Quaresma dos Santos contributed to the English version of this story.