On being sworn in as President of Angola last September, João Lourenço vowed he would crack down on the rampant corruption that flourished under his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos. He has, indeed, taken some steps towards honouring that promise. But in reality, those in power continue to benefit from self-awarded perks, favouritism and influence peddling while ignoring conflicts of interest.

But is it all just a distraction? On February 12th, Finance Minister Archer Mangueira ordered the sale of five light aircraft owned by the Angolan state: three Beechcraft 1900s and two Twin Otters, as per his ministerial despatch 47/18. It orders the National Director of State Patrimony, Mr Valentim Joaquim Manuel, to draw up contracts for the sale of the aircraft with SJL-Aeronautica, EAPA and Air Jet.

Imagine our surprise then to find out that SJL-Aeronautica was set up in 2010 by General Sequeira João Lourenço, the current President’s brother. Similarly, EAPA – Sociedade Agropecuária de Angola is a company owned by the current Deputy Chairman of Angola’s parliament, General Higino Carneiro, who is also a member of the ruling party’s political bureau. And Air Jet belongs to a former Angolan Air Force officer, António de Jesus Janota Bete.

It begs the question: why are state aircraft being sold off to these well-connected people rather than being auctioned to the highest bidder?

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Angola has laws that are supposed to flag up and avert potential conflicts of interest involving public officials. Article 28 of the Law of Public Probity stipulates that officials should abstain from intervening in situations involving family members. Further, Angola’s Constitution says that any matter dealt with at ministerial level, is the same in law as if were dealt with directly by the President, as juridically-speaking the President delegates to his ministers and officials but the buck stops with him.

In this specific case, President João Lourenço has delegated powers to Finance Minister Archer Mangueira, who in turn has delegated powers to Patrimony Director-General Valentim Manuel, who then sells off state-owned planes to the President’s brother. In legal terms, they are only acting on behalf of the President. This means in legal terms that João Lounrenço is selling state assets off to his own brother, a clear conflict of interest and breach of the law.

This is not just about interpreting the fine print of Angola’s laws. João Lourenço was supposed to usher in a new era of “Public Morality” and favourable business deals with the same cast of characters, be they the President’s brother or other well-connected members of the ruling MPLA, are in clear violation of what Angolans were led to expect. Fine-sounding laws already existed and were flouted with impunity throughout the rapacious 38 year-rule of José Eduardo dos Santos.

No, what Angolans really want from their new President is for him to deliver on his promises: it’s easy to talk-the-talk, harder to walk-the-walk. There’s no point in delivering speeches about civic responsibility and new public morality unless he sets the example from the very top and shows that he will not tolerate the favouritism and influence-peddling of the Dos Santos years happening on his watch.

Recently, the office of the Attorney General publicly named the Chief of Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces, General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, a formal suspect for criminal association.  More specifically, General Nunda was implicated in a US $50 billion scam led by a Thai businessman.  However, the Attorney General later apologized for the “mistake”.  The bungle has deeply troubled the Army and the judiciary, and has cast a shadow on President Lourenço’s anti-corruption drive.

When General Hélder Fernando Pitta Grós was appointed to the office of Attorney General of the Republic by Angola’s new President, João Lourenço, in December 2017, public opinion was divided. On the one hand, there was disappointment that yet again a military figure would occupy what should be a civilian position. On the other, there was optimism that, after ten years under the jackboot of the truculent and controversial Dos Santos-appointee, General João Maria de Sousa, the country’s prosecuting authority might finally be under the control of a legal brain with sufficient zeal and credibility to reform a tarnished institution.

Three months on, the new Attorney General has badly bungled the questioning of the army top brass in connection with an attempted US $50 billion scam and has been forced into a humiliating climb down, with both military and civilian critics calling for him to be sacked.

The mystery of the vanishing US $50 Billion Dollars

The saga begins with a criminal investigation into fraud and money-laundering allegations against a Thai financier, Raveeroj (aka Roger) Rithchoteanan, of Centennial Energy Thailand, and his accomplices (*see footnotes), who are accused of passing a false financial instrument to an Angolan bank under the guise of facilitating developmental financing for Angolan projects. It’s alleged that a US $50 billion check from Centennial Energy was a fake aimed at persuading their supposed beneficiary partners to invest with them.

The Centennial ‘philanthropists’ were invited to visit Angola by Celeste de Brito, a well-connected Angolan businesswoman. She now stands accused of complicity in the Centennial fraud, and of allegedly forging the signature of the current Angolan Vice-President, Bornito de Sousa, to obtain entry visas for Rithchoteanan and his associates.

It appears the Centennial investment ‘pitch’ convinced a few Angolan business owners to part with some money. But their biggest target by far was an army-led cooperative named Ondjo Yetu [“Our House” in the local Umbundu language). The business was desperate for finance for a massive project to build social housing for hundreds of military and civilian personnel. As a result, the then director of UTIP (a technical unit within the Presidency to vet private investments), Norberto Garcia, enthusiastically supplied the backings. Consequently Centennial proposed a joint venture with the cooperative.

At first, this move was hailed as the savior of nearly 700 unrealized projects, which had stalled for lack of funding. However, the proverbial rat was ultimately smelled. It turned out that the US $50 billion windfall was a mirage – the cheque deposited at Angola’s BNI (International Business Bank) never cleared.

In short order, between February 21 and 25 of this year, Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) arrested four Thai nationals, an Eritrean, a Canadian and their Angolan accomplices.* (see footnote)

Old habits (and old fears) die hard in Angola after 38 years of the abusive and highly corrupt Dos Santos regime, during which connections to the ruling elite guaranteed impunity for various crimes. When the SIC investigators realized that Celeste de Brito was connected to Bornito de Sousa, they hastily passed the buck to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic. It fell to the National Directorate of Investigation and Penal Action (DNIAP) to pick up the case and interrogate the “well-connected” suspects.

And this is where the wheels truly came off the wagon. In obedience to President João Lourenço’s vow to crack down on corruption, the Under Director of DNIAP, Luis Ferreira Benza Zanga, excitedly revealed that not only had they made 12 arrests and had 70% of the evidence needed to convict, but among the formal suspects still awaiting interrogation were four Generals, including the Chief of the General Staff himself.

Wrong target?

Ultimate responsibility for the military housing project, though not its day-to-day management, lay with the Chief of the General Staff, General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda. He is a former UNITA officer during the country’s long civil war, who transferred into the Angolan Armed Forces and has proven an able and much-respected commander, serving since 2002, first as Deputy Chief of the General Staff and then Chief. Having reached the age of 65, he has already announced he will retire when his term of office expires this October.

Attorney-General Pitta Grós reportedly took it upon himself to tackle the veteran General Nunda in person, at the General Staff headquarters. According to the head of the Army, General Pitta Grós asked him to resign his position and subject himself to questioning in connection with the Centennial investigation. Insult was added to injury by Luis Ferreira Benza Zanga’s over-zealous announcement to the news media that General Nunda was a formal suspect in the now notorious case, and could face charges of criminal association, fraud and money-laundering.

In the ensuing uproar, members of the FAA top brass and parliamentarians alike, called for the Attorney General to step down over his mishandling of the case, which badly backfired on his office. In trying to prove it would be ‘squeaky clean,’ General Pitta Grós’ office has now shown its impotence in the face of the MPLA’s military hierarchy.

General Nunda responded to us at Maka Angola with his side of the story – a cautionary tale for our times. He reveals not only the names of the people he clearly sees as the real culprits behind this mess, but also the naiveté and vulnerability of Angolan institutions in the face of promised credits and funds from abroad.

In his conversation with Maka Angola, quoted at length below, he starts by explaining how in 2015 the General Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) set up ‘Ondjo Yetu’ to create much-needed social housing for soldiers and support staff.

“We appointed Brigadier José Arsénio Manuel, a former head of Army Telecommunications and one of the principal stakeholders in UNIPREV [the Portuguese acronym for the Angolan Association for Benefits and Social Security] as CEO of Ondjo Yetu. He was chosen because of his experience in the construction of three previous condominium projects for UNIPREV.”

“Ondjo Yetu needed to find private financial backers as partners to seed-fund the project. Brigadier Arsénio submitted various proposals to my office, but none were followed up. Then more recently the Brigadier came to my office to say he had managed to find the money for the social housing project and that the funds had been deposited in the Banco de Negócios Internacional, the BNI.”

“He’d been handed an investment agreement between what was then known as the Private Investment Technical Unit [The Dos Santos Presidency’s Unidade Técnica de Investimento Privado, UTIP] and a Thai company called Centennial Energy*, headed by Raveeroj Rithchoteanan, who had bestowed on Angola (what turned out to be) a fraudulent cheque to the value of US $50 billion.”

The investment memorandum with Centennial had been signed on November 30 last year [2017] by the then UTIP Director, now MPLA (ruling party) spokesman, Norberto Garcia. At the time, Norberto Garcia told the media: “The existence of this fund will attract money to the market, will fund the market, which will then be able to self-sustain. This fund makes perfect sense because the partner intends to be part of a joint-venture.”

Mr Garcia went on to say that the Thai Fund would finally make it possible to kickstart the 688 projects that were stalled for lack of finance. And he said “Angola has to approve this fund, this opportunity.”

General Nunda says that when Brigadier Arsénio first briefed him on this subject, he was told the Thais had a fund of US $20 billion available. The Chief of the General Staff says he began the process of due diligence, calling the principal shareholder and Chairman of the BNI board, Mr. Mário Palhares, to set up a meeting with Brigadier José Arsénio Manuel, to verify the authenticity both of the Thai company and its check.

The Brigadier subsequently brought the Thai partners and their associates to meet the Chief of Staff at his office on December 14, 2017. In the course of that meeting General Nunda says the Brigadier requested the return of the check deposited with the BNI. The excuse was that the BNI had not followed the necessary procedures to clear the funds and as a result they were not yet available.

For its part, the BNI issued a statement on February 3, 2018 stating that it had referred the matter to the appropriate authorities after learning from social media that the BNI name was being used “inappropriately” by Centennial and its partners.

In the interim, General Nunda says he had repeatedly advised caution: “I explicitly told Brigadier Arsénio that they had to work with UTIP, as that was the state institution responsible for inviting businesses, including the Ondjo Yetu Cooperative, to tender projects for Centennial Energy financing.”

The Chief of the General Staff also received written details of the agreement from the Brigadier and then referred these to his legal department for evaluation. He also took the precaution of sending a written briefing on the project and draft agreement to his Commander-in-Chief, President João Lourenço, who in turn passed it on to his Defense Minister, General Salviano de Jesus Sequeira, better known by his nom-de-guerre, “Kianda”.

By February 12, 2018 General Kianda offered his considered opinion to the Chief of the General Staff: he had grave doubts about the credibility, technical expertise and financial health of the Thai company. “Given the doubts expressed by the Minister,” states General Nunda, “I concluded that I should not sign the draft agreement”

General Nunda left for the United States of America the following day to take part in the February 14-16 meeting of the military heads of the SADC nations at the United Nations in New York. Thereafter, he flew to South Africa to attend the South African Defence Forces’ anniversary celebrations. While in South Africa, he received word from General Altino Carlos Santos (head of the General Staff’s Planning and Organization Directorate and auditor of the Ondjo Yetu Cooperative) on February 21 that the Thai representatives of Centennial Energy had been arrested.

Venerable veteran turns tables on the new sheriff in town

Barely had he returned to Luanda that on March 3 General Nunda received the fateful visit to his office from the Attorney-General. “The PGR [Portuguese acronym for Attorney-General of the Republic] proposed to me that I should resign. I replied that I would not do so, because I had done nothing wrong and committed no crime,” said General Nunda.

General Hélder Pitta Grós, the Attorney General of Angola.

Defense sources say it was an extraordinary step for the Attorney General to have taken this action. Only the FAA Commander-in-Chief – i.e. the President himself – has the power to fire or demand the resignation of his Chief of the General Staff.

In this case, the information released so far, suggests that General Nunda acted by the book. President João Lourenço has repeatedly warned members of his administration to be wary of attempted frauds. “The President told a meeting of the Defense and Security Council to take great care with any (funding) proposals and that our institutions must be prepared to detect potential fraud.”

“He repeated the same message at the swearing-in ceremony of General Miala as Head of the Security and Intelligence Service (SINSE), reiterating that great care must be taken in the evaluation of proposals, especially at a time of crisis, when there is greater temptation to take advantage of Angola’s vulnerability.”

There seems to be no doubt that General Nunda still enjoys President Lourenço’s confidence as he was given greater powers of oversight over the security and intelligence service within a day or so of the Attorney-General’s misguided overture.

With a host of senior military and political figures lining up to condemn the Attorney-General for what they saw as the outrageous attempt to blacken the army chief’s name, the Office of the PGR issued a public apology for its “mistake”.

The Attorney General has kept a low profile since, and has yet to offer an explanation of how such a “mistake” had originally come about. He has however scrambled to exercise damage control in the wake of General Nunda’s self-exculpatory statement and the outcry provoked by the suggestion that he might be a person of interest in the fraud investigation.

Recently, on March 27, the now contrite General Pitta Grós reappeared at General Staff headquarters to apologize in person. Unsurprisingly, he did not find General Nunda in a forgiving mood. He was told to direct his apology to the 130,000 soldiers and 28,000 civilian workers who had placed their trust in the integrity of their Chief of Staff. Heaping further humiliation on Pitta Grós, General Nunda then dragged him over to the Defense Ministry to face Minister Kianda.

“He repeated his apology and there was no further mention of the word ‘defendant’. As a result, we continue to perform our duties without constraint,” says General Nunda. “And I have received no communication from the PGR regarding treating me as a suspect in this case.”

Notwithstanding the Attorney General’s contrition, there is simmering anger in some quarters over what’s perceived as unwarranted heavy-handedness by Pitta Grós. His critics say that before the investigation was even complete, he behaved like a judge and jury and tried to impose a sanction that can only be ordered by the President himself.

In short, they accuse Pitta Grós of exceeding his remit and also of undermining the chain of command – a dangerous double whammy. Speaking on the state-run TV station, Televisão Pública de Angola, the ruling MPLA member of parliament Mário Pinto de Andrade was scathing in his judgement; he claimed that the “deplorable behaviour of the Attorney-General”would lead to his being removed from office by any civilized country.”

In fairness, the new Attorney-General, barely months into his job, has at least shown a Robert Mueller-like disinclination to be intimidated from doing his duty. Presumably the evidence amassed by the SIC and DNIAP aroused suspicions of collusion between the Thai conspirators and Ondjo Yetu. Unfortunately for General Pitta Grós, when there are so many crooked Angolan generals linked to corrupt dealings, he was supplied with the name of the one man against whom the mud simply doesn’t stick.

Unraveling dodgy dealers

A simple internet search is sufficient to cast some doubt on the credentials of the shady individuals involved in this affair.

Centennial Energy Thailand’s website places the company in Chiang Mai. Yet the company’s founder Raveeroj Rithchoteanana, also known as Roger Rithchoteanana, registered a company with a similar name in London in December 2016: Centennial Energy (Thailand) Co. Ltd. 6, with a forwarding mail service in London as the company’s supposed business address.

Roger’s sole co-director, the obligatory UK resident, turns out to be a Russian-born Israeli national, Polina Frimerman, first recorded as being in the UK in 2003. It is unclear to this point how they initially connected. Raveeroj/Roger was born in 1967 in Thailand, Polina in 1982 in Russia. He apparently lives in Chiang Mai, while she is listed on the electoral roll as living in Nottingham and apparently is employed by The Sherwood Institute.

Polina, however, has a much more sordid past, namely a six-year history of involvement in failed companies. Records show that she registered her own company, Frimer Capital Ltd. in September 2012, but its annual reports betray little profitable activity. Its capital has never risen much above £7,000, its debts always outweighing its assets. As of 2017, it had a reported negative net worth of -£690.

Simultaneously, between 2012 and 2013, she was listed as Company Secretary of Nottingham-based Nova Extractions Services Ltd. owned by another Russian national, Dr Alexander Novitskiy. That company has enjoyed slightly more success – mostly since Polina’s resignation.

Nonetheless, a Russian national named Kakadzhan Annamuradovich Omarov somehow selected Ms Frimerman to be his co-director in a company named Mega Torg (UK) Ltd. That company also failed to thrive and after a mere 16 months was wound up on November 28, 2016. At that point Ms Frimerman was listed as resident at 22 Fletcher Gate, Nottingham.

How surprising then that a mere two weeks later, Ms Frimerman pops up as co-director when Mr Rithchoteanan registers the UK version of Centennial Energy Thailand on December 12, 2016. Their business address is given as 20-22 Wenlock Road, London N1. This is an address that pops up frequently on the Companies House register because, among other things, it supplies onward mailing for those who have reasons not to list their real addresses. Once again the business is short-lived, and within a year they apply to have it dissolved and taken off the UK company register, although in the process they supply a change of address. Unsurprisingly it’s the same Nottingham address (22 Fletcher Gate) used by Mega Torg (UK). As of April 3, 2018 Centennial Energy (Thailand) Co. Ltd. 6, has ceased to exist.

And what of Raveeroj/Roger Rithchoteanan the Thai businessman apparently able to conjure up US $50 billion to rescue Angola? His biography says he was first employed with Central Element (Hong Kong) Ltd. and Central Element (Cambodia) Ltd., two companies that it has proven impossible to trace other than two ghost pages on Facebook. He then pops up as a self-described multi-million dollar financier facilitating projects in South East Asia, though it rapidly becomes clear that he is not providing the actual investment, but simply offering to act as a broker. In fact, despite the memorandum of understanding signed with Centennial that deep sea port in Myanmar has yet to be financed or built.

There are tantalizing mentions of Mr Rithchoteanan in connection with what turns out to be a fake news story, involving the late Ferdinand Marcos signing away hundreds of tons of stolen gold with the proceeds being sent to Centennial Energy Thailand to facilitate the secret printing of hundreds of millions of US dollar bills in the Philippines. The words “money laundering” appear in connection with his name. And yet he portrays himself as a fabulously wealthy philanthropist, the head of an eponymous World Foundation that requires a US $200 billion budget for the year to achieve what his website calls “quite a Big Hairy Audacious Goal”.

Apparently, donations are welcome.

*FOOTNOTES

Named suspects arrested and/or questioned by Angola’s SIC and DNIAP.

Celeste Marcelino de Brito António, Angolan national, aged 45 chairman of Natrabank and Tamara, owner of Celeste de Brito Lda. (Natrabank is located in one of the condominiums built by UNIPREV under Brigadier José Arsénio Manuel.

Brigadier José Arsénio Manuel, Angolan national, head of the Ondjwa cooperative, former head of Army Telecommunications and one of the principal stakeholders in UNIPREV

Christian Albano de Lemos, Angolan national aged 49, 1° Subchefe da Polícia Nacional, colocado no Departamento de Intercâmbio e Cooperação,

Ernesto Manuel Norberto Garcia, Angolan national, former Director of UTIP*, protégé of ex President José Eduardo dos Santos, currently MPLA spokesman

Belarmino Van-Dúnem, Angolan national, Former Director of APIEX

Raveeroj Rithchoteanan (aka Roger), Thai National, aged 50, owner of Centennial Energy Thailand

Monthita Pribai (or Pribwai)– Thai National, alleged to be Rithchoteanan’s spouse.

Theera Buapeng/Suapeng – Thai National, aged 29

Pracha Kanyaprasit – Thai National, aged 35

Haile Isaac Million – Eritrean National, aged 27

André Louis Roy – Canadian National

Portuguese titles and acronyms:

Agência para a Promoção do Investimento e Exportações de Angola, APIEX – Agency for the Promotion of Investment and Exports from Angola.

Banco de Negócios Internacional, BNI – International Business Bank

Procurador-Geral da República, PGR – Attorney General of the Republic

Procuradoria-Geral da República, also PGR – Office of the Attorney General of the Republic

Forças Armadas Angolanas, FAA – Angolan Armed Forces

Estado Maior Geral das Forças Armadas Angolanas, EMGFAA – General Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces

Chefe do Estado Maior das FAA, CEMGFAA – Chief of the General Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces

UNIPREV – Angolan Association for Social Security and Benefits

Unidade Técnica de Investimento Privado, UTIP – Private Investment Technical Unit

Additional Sources:

http://www.angola24horas.com/index.php/sociedade/item/9717-caso-bni-empresaria-celeste-de-brito-detida-por-burla-e-falsificacao-de-documentos

https://www.ccifrance-myanmar.org/sites/ccifrance-myanmar.org/files/mis2018_brochure_1.pdf

http://www.centennialenergythailand.com

http://www.rithchoteanan-foundation.com

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10521398/officers

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/YqVvzRivT0QHrweX9M9j1vf4fBA/appointments

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08200760/filing-history

In my professional career, I stood trial three times due to my exposés on the powerful elite in Angola. The first time, the plaintiffs were the President and the Attorney General (AG). The second time, I took on eight generals in a bundle as the plaintiffs. Now, in a repetition of the circumstances of that first trial, the plaintiffs are once again that former president and his AG.

Each of these trials takes place in an alternative reality in which fiction trumps fact: as though drawing attention to their behavior is more offensive than the offenses themselves.

Now, for the third time as of April 16, 2018, Luanda Provincial Court has a runaway plaintiff making a mockery of justice.

Judge Josina Ferreira Falcão decided that the date of the trial must be moved to April 24, and the location to the Office of the Attorney General (AG) of the Republic, to accommodate the whims of the accuser, the former AG, General João Maria de Sousa. The latter claims special privileges and immunity to justify why he has failed to appear in court for what is now the third time.

Nothing prepared me for the accuser running away from me and wanting the trial to be held in his former office, behind closed doors, and with my lawyer unable to ask him questions. But let me first share another irony.

As I enter the hall of the courtroom, four individuals who were just positioned in the entrance’s right corner, block my way with respectful greetings. One of them pulls me to the side with his handshake. They are senior officers of the Special Demining Unit of the President’s Intelligence Bureau.

I am on trial for the charge of committing a crime against state security, more specifically, insulting then President José Eduardo dos Santos. The Law on Crimes against State Security calls it “outrage against a body of sovereignty”. I face up to three years in prison for this crime, for having stressed, in 2016, that Dos Santos protected the corrupt. I face three years in prison for mentioning, in other words, that he was a kleptocrat.

There is also the second crime of “insulting” a public authority, punishable with up to an additional year in prison. I exposed a corrupt process through which the then attorney general, General João Maria de Sousa, received a title deed for three acres of a beachfront land to build a condominium in the coastal province of Kwanza-Sul. The director of the weekly newspaper O Crime, Mariano Brás, is also being tried on the same charges for disseminating my article, as other local publications did.

So, what were the officers of the president’s special demining unit doing there? They claimed that it was rather difficult to establish contact with me, and my trial was a surefire way of finding me in court. First, they offered me their support, and informed me that they would be in the audience. Second, they handed me an envelope with documents pertaining their unit’s predicaments: a tale of corruption, neglect of the sappers, and the worst of the presidency in human resources’ management.

One of the documents is a letter of complaint that the commanders of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th and 13th brigades of the Special Demining Unit of the President’s Intelligence Bureau sent to the new President, General João Lourenço, on December 6, 2017.

I ask the officers if they were fully aware of my own predicament. Almost whispering, they told me how they understood my situation, but that they had nowhere else to go to raise awareness of their case. The officers tell me that I shall triumph over the odds with fortitude to continue to serve those who regard me as a human rights defender. How ironic indeed!

The trial moves to the Office of the Attorney General

The former Attorney General João Maria de Sousa.

After the experience with the military officers, it is time to face judge Josina Ferreira Falcão. She is an awkward joker. In the previous session she portrayed herself as the “clown” with a big laugh, then she reprimanded me for an interview I gave in which I said my trial would be a sham.

First, she thanked the media for not publishing her picture as she had strictly imposed. Judge Falcão explained that she loved to go out and about on walks anonymously, and without fear, but if she convicted me it would spell trouble for her.

Here I am, on a sham show trial time and again, and now the judge is joking that it would be troubling for her to walk in the streets should she convict me.

Apart from her jokes the session was very short. The plaintiff did not show up. General João Maria de Sousa claimed, through his lawyer and the public prosecution, that he has immunity and special privileges. Thus he requested for the trial to be moved to the Office of the Attorney General. The judge ruled that the trial – in the place chosen by the accuser – will be held behind closed doors. Furthermore, I will be allowed to take only one legal counsel, who will not be able to ask questions directly to the former Attorney General. Again, jokingly, the judge said she will be the “parrot” in the room, and my lawyer would convey the questions to her, she will vet and ask the plaintiff.

In 2000, I was on trial for defaming President Dos Santos and then Attorney General Domingos Culolo. The trial was held in a courtroom, and the President sent his Chief of Staff as well as his press secretary. Other tricks were used such as the judge suspending my lawyer from practicing for six months, and throwing him out of the courtroom, but the sham trial was in the courtroom.

In 2015, five of the generals sat down in the courtroom as plaintiffs on the case they brought against me. It was tough, but there they were very dignified. Two of them have since bonded with me, and we chat regularly on the country’s daily affairs.

But this João Maria de Sousa is just plain bad news. In 2013, the Rapid Intervention Police tortured me (and filmed it) in their headquarters, along with fellow journalist Alexandre Solombe and seven activists who had just been released from jail. General João Maria de Sousa, grossly ignored the criminal complaint I lodged in his office against the police abuse.

My lawyer, Brigadier Horácio Junjuvili (ret.), tells the judge the request is another delaying tactic and calls for the end of the trial, and for me to be acquitted.

This is the background.

Back in the courtroom, the ensuing legal justifications for the accuser to move the courtroom to his former office misses the constitutional point of a fair trial. More importantly it is just a display of cowardice on his part.

My lawyer keeps shaking his head and smiling in disgust. The judge asks him to share his thoughts for she wants to smile along. She sets the date for the next hearing. He says such is not admitted in court, but let escape how the delaying tactics are ruining his holidays.

The judge suggests Brigadier Junjuvili postpones his trip, suggests a cheaper airliner and, joking again, hints that they can even meet abroad during the holidays and discuss the case.

Thus the session is adjourned.

My lawyer has already filed a complaint on the unconstitutionality of the decision, and requested for the trial to continue at Luanda’s Provincial Court. He has also filed for the charge against me, for the crime against the state security, to be dropped. Because it carries a sentence of more than two years, it cannot be tried in the kind of Police Court that I am currently facing. Anyway, the judge does not allow me to defend myself against these charges. She only wants to talk about the land allocated to the former Attorney General in Kwanza-Sul.

Come April 24, it is likely that there will be another twist. The change of president, after 38 years of Dos Santos’ rule, has not been felt on the judiciary. There is no semblance of the rule of law, but the mockery of justice.

P.S. This is how I intended to end the article, but today, April 20, I received an urgent phone call to go to the Luanda Provincial Court, just minutes before it closed for the weekend. At the 11th hour, General João Maria de Sousa’s legal counsel filed a petition to further postpone the trial. According to the petition, the former Attorney General will travel to Portugal, on April 23, and will not return until May 5.

This is now the fourth time the plaintiff has requested that the trial be postponed. The attached airfare, that cost a whopping US $8,335 for a first class seat, reveals that it was purchased on December 22, 2017.

So, the plaintiff knew that he would not be in the country on April 24. During the trial session of April 16, he had his counsel asking for it to be adjourned, and for the trial to be moved to the Office of the Attorney General for the day after his departure from Angola. The judge granted his whim. This is clearly obstruction of justice, and General João Maria de Sousa should be held in contempt of the court.

Today I returned to court. The judge was in no mood for jokes, berating me for my public criticism of what was decided in the previous session.

Judge Josina Ferreira Falcão ruled today against the request made last week by the plaintiff, former attorney general João Maria de Sousa. At the 11th hour, General Maria de Sousa’s counsel requested another postponement because his client had to travel to Portugal.

On April 16, attorney João Pedro cited special privileges and immunity to justify General Maria de Sousa’s no-show in court. He further requested that the proceedings be moved to the Office of the Attorney General. The judged ruled in favor of the requests.

However, last Friday afternoon, the court called to inform me that General Maria de Sousa had requested another postponement. Then, on Monday afternoon, the court notified me that the trial would proceed the following morning at Luanda’s Provincial Court.

The judge used much of the time to teach us as a “lesson” about the rule of law. She stressed time and again that she would not allow anyone to question her independence. She tried to highlight how competent she was by flipping back and forth between the Penal and Civil Codes to cite the articles that informed her decision for the “questioning” of the former attorney general to take place in the Office of the Attorney General. “Not the trial”, she insisted.

Once again, portraying herself as strictly law-abiding, she said that if the plaintiff had not travelled to Portugal we would have gone to the attorney general’s office to “question” the plaintiff.

Then, she read out her decision against the request for postponement, which she defined as disrespectful to the court. She also waived the need to question the plaintiff, and thus he no longer needs to show up in court.

My lawyer, Brigadier Horácio Junjuvili (ret.), denounced the delaying tactics of the plaintiff, and requested that the case be thrown out for lack of interest from the same person who lodged the complaint. I noticed that hardly anything my lawyer says of a critical nature makes it to the court records. He insisted that in the interest of the truth, I would not give up the right to have the plaintiff heard in court.

Well, the judge said, she had no way of bringing him to court, unless she issued a coercive order for him to be dragged there. Finally, the judge brightened up to one of her jokes, and said that the moment she issued such an order, General João Maria de Sousa would not return from Portugal. The runaway plaintiff is having it all.

My lawyer insisted. The judge replied that it was up to me if I wanted this proceeding to be dragged on without an end in sight, and shelved on her desk. She made it clear that there would be no assurances of the former attorney general showing up in court. She had also spent quite sometime, during her “lesson”, explaining that the plaintiff and the witness had the same prerogatives. She noted that even though the defendant could request the plaintiff be heard in court, the latter had the option of refusing.

When General João Maria de Sousa lodged the criminal complaint against me, and fellow journalist Mariano Brás who printed my exposé, he was still the Attorney General of Angola. He was still in that position when the case landed on the desk of judge Josina Falcão for the trial.

The behavior of this former attorney general is mind-boggling. He even challenged me during a recent interview, stating how he would see me in court and find out how much courage I had to face him. I had said before that I would call him corrupt to his face during the court proceedings.

Judge Josina Falcão said that my insistence on the testimony of the plaintiff would lead to the postponement of the hearing of witnesses the following day. These are the officers of the land registration office in the coastal province of Kwanza-Sul, who could clarify the procedures that led General João Maria to have a title deed for three acres of beachfront land to build a private condominium. I wrote, back in 2016, that he got the land through corrupt means. He then had the public prosecution charge me with the crimes of insult to public authority, and outrage to a body of sovereignty under the Law on Crimes against the State Security. The last one was for mentioning that President Dos Santos protected the corrupt.

I signaled to my lawyer to waive my right to confront the culprit or the plaintiff – now it seems to be same – in the courtroom, so that we can ask tough questions to the witnesses tomorrow.

The judge wants us to pay for the expenses of the witnesses, for their trip to Luanda, in case we insist on what she terms “the duel” between me and the former AG in court.

Attorney João Pedro, the plaintiff’s lawyer, agreed to fully pay their expenses. We are not having it.

Finally, the judge had another pressing matter. An interview I gave to Radio France International. She spent quite sometime looking for the audio on her smartphone, and put it loud for everyone to hear. She was very upset for my distrust of how justice is dispensed in Angola, for she did not want to be mixed up with bad apples. I replied that I would be happy to explain myself about the content of the interview upon her lodging a criminal complaint. She replied that she would not do it, to avoid granting me a wish.

Well, I am not a masochist wishing to go back to that court for another trial.

We shall see tomorrow.

After the 2017 elections, the hopes ordinary Angolans placed on President João Lourenço were so high that many regarded him as a gift from God. Next September, his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos, will finally step down from the leadership of the ruling MPLA, after 39 years. The combined imperial powers of the country’s presidency and of the MPLA will make João Lourenço the absolute ruler of Angola, and it does not bode well for the country.

The political partisanship of the army and the militarization of justice are two troubling trends seen since Lourenço took office. Both need to be addressed urgently before he gets comfortable with absolute power.

Initially, President Lourenço enjoyed a surge of popularity thanks to a strong anti-corruption stance. He fired his predecessor’s children from key positions, and ditched some other rotten apples. He also allowed for some other senior officials to be publicly named formal suspects in grand corruption cases, though no one has yet been arrested.

But these early hopes have been dashed by the appointments and promotions that President Lourenço has made, and his popularity has sunk with the same speed as he earned it.

For instance, last April he appointed his own brother, General Sequeira João Lourenço, as deputy head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau, which overseas the armed forces, the national police and the intelligence services. In February, Lourenço’s government sold state-owned planes (Beechcraft 900s) to the same brother’s air company, SJL Aeronáutica, without a public tender and for an undisclosed price. Through acts like this, the president has exposed himself as a hypocrite.

What is most worrying is how the President, himself a general, is endangering the already fragile cohesion of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) by handing it over to an MPLA apparatchik. The FAA originates from the 1992 integration of the former MPLA party-state People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) and UNITA’s former guerrilla Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA). The integrated army withstood the civil war that returned and ravaged the country for ten more years after its creation.

Recently, President Lourenço dismissed the chief of the General Staff of the FAA, General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda: the former FALA officer to become head of the FAA. Abroad, the move was seen as another outstanding sweep of Dos Santos’ cronies and protégés and as another example of tackling high-level corruption. The general’s name was associated with a multi billion-dollar scam. He had had been previously asked by the attorney general to resign. In an exclusive to Maka Angola, General Nunda clarified his position and told how the attorney general had apologized to him for the formal announcement that he had been named a formal suspect in the scam. Legally, there was no case against him, only a political one.

General Nunda’s term was due to end in October, but the President sacked him in October and replaced him with General António Egídio de Sousa Santos “Disciplina”. The appointment sent shockwaves through the army and concerned sections within society who view General Santos as a largely political figure, with little aptitude for the job as head of the armed forces.

General Santos was previously deputy chief of the General Staff for Patriotic Education, which is the post-communist name for political commissariat. For two years until 2012, the general simultaneously held his position in the army and as a Central Committee member of the ruling MPLA: an unconstitutional situation. He is best known for his partisanship and opportunism and lust for partying. He has thrown two lavish parties within a week to celebrate his rise to the top job of the army.

In the 1980s, Lourenço headed the National Political Directorate of the FAPLA. It was in charge of all the political commissars and controlled the army on behalf of the MPLA, under the one-party system. Former political commissars have risen to the top leadership, and among them are: the current vice-president, Bornito de Sousa; the minister of state and head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau, General Pedro Sebastião; and now the head of the army, General Sousa Santos.

Minutes after being sworn in, General Sousa Santos showed the press how inept and incoherent he is. Asked about the reaction of the rank and file to his appointment and his priorities for the army, he replied: “Allow me to cite the Bible. I am the good shepherd, and I know my flock, and my flock recognizes me.” The sound bite went viral on social media where many in the army, including generals, openly expressed their disbelief, and ridiculed him aplenty. Angola is a secular state. The general, who holds a PhD in History, forgot that in his attempt to dodge a basic question.

Angola has an army of over 138,000 soldiers, and more than 600 generals on active duty. Retired generals are like mushrooms, too many to count.

General Sousa Santos is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing. Four years ago, in 2014, we wrote about a generals’ involvement in a triumvirate which aimed to destabilize the army by placing it under the partisan control of MPLA in the post-Dos Santos era.

At the time we wrote: “the secret discussion group aimed at fostering a climate of instability within the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), in such a way as to justify purges. This strategy is known as the purification of the FAA.” The then head of the Military Intelligence and Security Service, General Zé Maria, led the group and the third party was Lieutenant-General João António Santana “Lungo” of the Security Studies Office within the Intelligence Bureau of the Presidency.

“The object of the scheme is to ensure that generals who were formerly with UNITA, then a rebel movement, and who joined the FAA as the result of peace accords are seen as loyal to the UNITA political leadership and therefore will be seen as a threat to the MPLA’s hold on power, particularly in the post-Dos Santos era.

“The main target of the intrigue is the current General Chief of Staff of the FAA, Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, who left UNITA in 1993, joined the government forces, and was instrumental in destroying the war machine of his former commander, Jonas Savimbi. The rebel leader was killed in action in 2002, thus bringing the 27-year post-independence war to an end. Zé Maria and his allies are now circulating information within the FAA that Nunda is trying to promote ex-UNITA officers in order to make it easier for him eventually to seize power.”

According to the plotters at the time, the partisan control of the army by MPLA would be achieved with the appointment of General Sousa Santos to the top job. Such a plot had to be addressed among the top brass of the army, and it was General Nunda himself who prevailed against the others to maintain the cohesion of FAA, and the army as a pillar of peace and national unity. President Lourenço, against conventional wisdom, has adopted the plotters’ strategy. This must be denounced for the sake of peace and democracy.

Making Generals

President João Lourenço (Photo: Angop).

Meanwhile, President Lourenço has lost no time in creating yet several more generals, one of them already dead. On April 19, the president posthumously promoted Angola’s founding President Agostinho Neto, who died in 1979, to the rank of three-star general of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA). President Lourenço also awarded the former President José Eduardo dos Santos the rank of three-star general, and retired him from active duty through Commander-in-Chief Order 9/18.

The family of the late president Neto publicly dismissed the gesture as unnecessary, and called on Lourenço to devote his attention to the living rather than the dead.

But what shows General Lourenço to be a troubling copycat of General Dos Santos (ret.) is the promotion of the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Manuel Miguel da Costa Aragão, to the rank of Brigadier. The chief justice has been a civilian for decades, and was transferred from the Supreme Court, where he held the same position, on Lourenço’s orders. In 2012 President Dos Santos promoted the then-chief justice of the Supreme Court, Cristiano André, to the rank of Lieutenant-General.

President Lourenço is maintaining the militarization of justice. Last December he appointed General Hélder Pitta Grós, who is still on active duty, to the country’s attorney general.

The signs are mounting that President Lourenço is hiding his authoritarian claws behind the façade of his anti-corruption rhetoric. Little else is happening in the country besides smoke screens and the maintenance of the status quo. This is worrisome.

So far, the only clear strategy from the president seems to be the consolidation of his personal power.

I am due back in court on May 21 for exposing corruption. The corrupt former attorney general of the Republic, General João Maria de Sousa, is the plaintiff. He has failed to appear in court for the past two months.

He even demanded that the trial be moved from the courtroom to the Office of the Attorney General, claiming immunity and privileges. But on April 25, he fled to Portugal and became, for the third time, a runaway plaintiff.

There is a great irony in this trial that exposes the farcical anti-corruption discourse of President João Lourenço. On May 17, his ruling MPLA, in power for the past 42 years, passed the Law for the Repatriation of Capital. This new law might as well be aptly named the Law on Money Laundering, for that is what it is.

According to this law, those who have siphoned off funds from the public purse and parked them abroad can now return them home safely, and become the rightful and legitimate owners of the loot. There will be no questions asked, and the corrupt will be able to dispose of the funds as they please, even resending them abroad as legally laundered money. The law also makes it clear for the corrupt who have invested abroad, as the governor of the Angolan National Bank, José de Lima Massano, explains, “people  cannot be forced to bring their money back to the country.”

Several government and former officials, as well as relatives and sidekicks, have seen their accounts blocked abroad, and many more fear the same fate. Thus, this law is designed by the very corrupt to allow themselves to keep the loot by bringing it back home for legal laundering.

Furthermore, there are a dozen high profile public cases of corruption, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, as reported by the attorney general’s office. But only the small fry get arrested.

Thus far, there is no trial for the corrupt: only for those who oppose corruption.

It is under these circumstances that I am back in the courtroom for having exposed the corrupt ways in which the then-attorney general benefited from three acres of beachfront land for real estate development back in 2011. Because of all the evidence I provided to the investigators, I was not charged under the media law or for defamation. I am on trial under the obscure Law on Crimes against the State Security (for outrage against a body of sovereignty: the president), and for insulting a public authority under the Portuguese Imperial Penal Code of 1886.

On the allegation of defamation, the truth is the only evidence that I need; while outrage against the president and insult to the attorney general are all about the subjectivity of power.

On April 25, during the previous court session, the former administrator [mayor] of the coastal municipality of Porto-Amboim, Francisco Kapassola, detailed how he used discretionary powers to grant the land to citizen João Maria de Sousa. He claimed he did not know who he was, though he knew very well who I was by reading me on social media. Judge Josina Falcão berated him for “not knowing”, in his capacity as a public oficial, who the attorney general was: “for God’s sake, Mr Kapassola!”

Moreover, he explained that his administration had reserved an area for housing projects to meet the demand caused by the construction of a fabrication yard to service the Angolan oil and gas industry. Housing prices in the little town had skyrocketed to Luanda levels, and he confirmed that João Maria de Sousa received the land in that area to build houses to sell. Thus the then-attorney general João Maria de Sousa was exposed as lying under oath when he claimed he only wanted to build four wooden houses for his family’s retreat.

Whichever way, the irregularities in his acquisition of the title deed for the land were all acknowledged by Francisco Kapassola. Yet, I am the one on trial. For publishing my investigation, journalist Mariano Brás is also on the dock.

To add insult to injury, I recently published another exposé on an insurance company called Garantia Seguros SA. The former attorney general and the current chief justice of the Constitutional Court, Brigadier Manuel Aragão, are major shareholders and have attended its general assembly meetings. They have also taken part in decision-making processes in violation of the magistrates’ laws that forbid them from engaging in private business. This insurance company has not paid its employees for the past year. Who will investigate the magistrates? Who will put an end to their ilegal business?

Furthermore, President Lourenço’s inner circle has initiated a new phase of grand corruption. Recently, the creation of a new public-private air company, Air Connection Express, was announced to take over the entire domestic market from the national carrier TAAG.

The minister of state and head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau, General Pedro Sebastião, his deputy and president’s brother, General Sequeira João Lourenço, as well as minister of state and the president’s chief of Staff, Frederido Cardoso, are among the select cast of freeloaders or, formally, shareholders of the new company. The state has provided the sovereign guarantee for the purchase of six Canadian Bombardier Q400 planes, for US $143 million.

Rather than being dispirited, I am back in court with a renewed sense of duty. The way this regime has driven many Angolans into the earth, lays a heavy weight upon my conscience. It wages war on my sense of belonging as a citizen of this country. I am here to fight back.

Angola should not be the land of the corrupt and wicked leaders. As Winston Churchill had it: “It is the courage to continue that counts.”

Journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, who has braved decades of harassment and prosecution to expose corruption and human rights abuses in his native Angola, has been named the International Press Institute (IPI)’s 70th World Press Freedom Hero.

IPI’s World Press Freedom Hero award honours journalists who have made significant contributions to the promotion of press freedom, particularly in the face of great personal risk. Together with the annual Free Media Pioneer award, it will be presented during a special ceremony on June 22 in Abuja, Nigeria during IPI’s annual World Congress and General Assembly. For the past four years, both awards have been given in partnership with Copenhagen-based International Media Support.

Marques began his career as a reporter for the state-owned newspaper Jornal de Angola in 1992, before being fired over his willingness to deviate from the line set by Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the former Portuguese colony with an iron fist between 1979 and 2017.

In 2008, after years of writing for independent outlets in Angola and authoring numerous reports on human rights violations, Marques founded the watchdog website Maka Angola, which provides investigative coverage of corruption involving top Angolan political, business and military leaders.

Marques first drew official ire in 1999 when he published an article in the independent weekly Agora describing dos Santos as a dictator responsible for destroying the country and promoting incompetence and corruption. Shortly thereafter, Marques was arrested and charged with defamation. He spent 43 days in pre-trial detention before being convicted and given a six-month prison term in March 2000. Angola’s Supreme Court later reduced the penalty to a suspended sentence.

Much of Marques’s crusading work has focused on the kleptocratic management of natural resources in Angola, whose vast oil and mineral reserves have enriched a small ruling elite even as millions remain in poverty. His internationally best-known work, the 2011 book “Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola”, detailed allegations of murder, assault, arbitrary detention, and forced displacement of civilians in relation to the country’s lucrative diamond-mining industry. After a group of top Angolan generals implicated in the book filed charges, Marques was again given a six-month suspended sentence for defamation.

In the early 2000s, Marques also reported prominently on corruption and alleged military abuses in the oil-rich province of Cabinda, home to a long-running separatist movement. Most recently, he published the report “Angola’s Killing Fields – A Report on Extrajudicial Executions in Luanda”. Marques has faced threats and physical and verbal harassment from the authorities throughout his caereer.

IPI announced the Prize today.

IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi hailed Marques for his dedication to the pursuit of truth in an unforgiving environment for press freedom.

“Despite Angola’s systematic repression of independent media, Rafael Marques has managed – at great personal risk – to bravely and persistently shine a light on abuse of power at the highest levels”, she said. “Through his articles, books, and research, Mr. Marques has carried out the type of watchdog journalism that the country’s state-dominated media have been unable to perform, providing an essential service to the Angolan public and the international community.”

Trionfi also condemned an ongoing court case against Marques, in which he and a colleague, Mariano Brás Lourenço, face charges of insulting a public authority over a 2016 article scrutinizing a real-estate transaction involving Angola’s then attorney-general. The pair face up to four years in prison if convicted. The case has raised doubts about possible democratic reform in Angola under President João Lourenço, who succeeded dos Santos last year.

“Angola must end its harassment of Mr. Marques and all other journalists in Angola”, she remarked. “If President Lourenço is serious about bringing change, he must allow for critical, independent media to flourish.”

In a statement, Marques welcomed the award as “wonderful news”.

“I am deeply honoured and thankful”, he said. “I am honoured because this award comes at a time when I am on trial for exposing high-level corruption, while President Lourenço claims to be fighting it. Yet it is unfitting to receive an international award for doing the basic work of exposing the ills of my own country in order to right them for the common good.”

Marques is the first IPI World Press Freedom Hero from Angola, and the third from the Portuguese-speaking world, after Portugal’s Nuno Rocha and Brazil’s Júlio de Mesquita Neto. A graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London and Oxford University, Marques previously received the Allard Prize for International Integrity and the Train Foundation’s Civil Courage Prize, among other awards.

The 2017 World Press Freedom Hero Award was given to Ethiopian journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega, who spent nearly six years in prison on sham anti-terror charges before being freed in February 2018.

Finally, on May 21, 2018, the plaintiff appeared in court, some three months after the scheduled start of the trial. The former attorney general of the Republic, General João Maria de Sousa (2007-2017), had one condition: The trial had to be held in camera during his testimony. It would no longer be in the office of the attorney general, as he initially petitioned.

Judge Josina Falcão explained that it would be impossible to keep the plaintiff’s testimony a secret, because the two journalists on trial would reveal it to the public. She stressed that the General would have to sit on the witness stand like anyone else. No special chair for him.

As he entered the courtroom, he told his security detail to take their seats. His lawyer signaled him to keep them out, and he obliged. He was in an uncomfortable position, his hands trembled throughout the proceedings.

The plaintiff presented three points by way, apparently, of substantiating his case. First, he confirmed that he signed the contract and deed for the land. Second, he claimed to be dogged by my writings – he argued that he did not understand why other state officials were not similarly exposed. Finally, he insisted I should pay for calling former president Dos Santos “the godfather of corruption”.

The accusations

I stand accused of two crimes: insult to public authority, under the Portuguese Imperial Penal Code of 1886, and of outrage against a body of sovereignty, under the Crimes Against State Security Law.

The first accusation was for exposing, in 2016, the attorney general’s acquisition of three acres of land, under his name. He requested the land to build a for-profit residential condominium in the coastal town of Porto-Amboim.

In the same article I described how the attorney general often merged his public duties with his private business interests. I demonstrated how, when he was attorney general, he had simultaneously been a managing partner of some of the companies in which he was a significant shareholder, such as Imexco and Prestcom. This clearly violated the Constitution and relevant laws. I explained that I had written to the president exposing these conflicts of interest but received no answer. I concluded that  President José Eduardo dos Santos (1979-2017) protected General de Sousa because, as his boss, he was himself the “godfather of corruption.” For this, the public prosecution, under the supervision of General de Sousa, charged me of committing a crime against state security.

The plaintiff’s testimony

1. The land was free

With this brief background to the case, we can unpack the plaintiff’s testimony.

First, he admitted that he received the land deed free of charge. He acknowledged that he signed the deed and the contract with the provincial government of Kwanza-Sul, in his office (the attorney general’s) in Luanda. He claimed to have returned these documents to the province of Kwanza-Sul, through his aide de camp, without keeping a copy.

Furthermore, he said that after signing the deed, he realized that the land was not as close to the beach as he wanted, and the soil was poor, so he abandoned it. He claimed he thus “naturally” lost the right to the land. My exposé of his acquisition, he therefore argued, was defamatory.

The judge reminded him that the process that led to him obtaining a deed under his name was so fraught with irregularities that it was “sickening”. How could he have signed the deed without paying, as required by law, to cover some of the initial administrative procedures? How could the process have gone so far if critical documents required for the concession had not been produced? Moreover, the public edict on the land concession lasted only 13 days contrary to the 30 days established by law for people to contest. And what of the peasants removed from the land without compensation? Within two months from his request, the then-attorney general had received the deed. The judge asked him directly “did you benefit because of your position?”, “did you bribe?”

General João Maria de Sousa asserted that any citizen would have been pleased with a swift resolution from the public administration. According to him, blame for anything else, including any illegalities in the process, should be placed on the local administration, as he only acted as a citizen.

2. Persecuting the chief prosecutor

General João Maria de Sousa, after his testimony in court.

Next, he said that I had singled him out and “persecuted” him, as there were a number of state employees blurring the lines between their public duties and private interests. As an example, he alleged, without naming the person, that a certain public official was simultaneously CEO of a private bank. He also alleged that there were magistrates and ministers who remained engaged with the law firms they owned. He attacked me as unfair for not exposing them all!

In 2013, as a matter of fact, I filed a complaint with his office, requesting that the then vice-president Manuel Vicente be investigated for unconstitutionally holding a directorship in the China-Sonangol International Holding Limited. On December 5, 2016, I lodged another complaint with his office identifying the Minister of State and head of the president’s Intelligence Bureau, General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa”, as simultaneously holding directorships in his own companies in Macau, China, including “Consultadoria Baía Limitada”. Then attorney general, General de Sousa, ignored these complaints and many others.

Even as regarded the land case, I had sent him a questionnaire. In his testimony he claimed to have answered, but that I did not give him enough time and that he did not know where to send his responses, despite my questionnaire including my contact details. He then claimed to have torn up his answers in shock. I only published the article about the land two weeks after being met with silence.

3. The crime against state security

The plaintiff’s main strategy took a different course. He insisted that I insulted then President dos Santos, by calling him the “godfather of corruption” for the protection he had afforded General de Sousa.

In 2009, I wrote to President dos Santos detailing General de Sousa’s business activities and explaining how they contravened the law. I attached copies of the official daily gazettes in which the articles of incorporation stated clearly that General de Sousa was the managing partner of Imexco and Prestcom. I received no reply.

General de Sousa, however, made an astounding revelation. He said the president had ordered an investigation at the time, and he was called in to justify his activities. He claimed that the president’s advisor for legal affairs, Francisco Queirós, had written a legal opinion that exonerated him of any wrongdoing. My lawyer requested that a copy of this opinion be brought to court. The former advisor is the current Minister of Justice.

The witnesses

Two witnesses came from the province of Kwanza-Sul to testify. The first, Alberto Boaventura, was in charge of the local branch of the Geodesy and Cartography Institute, when it processed General de Sousa’s application. His line of defense was simple: He claimed to be unable to explain how critical procedures for granting land title were not followed.

Bernardo Maneco, the current head of the same institute, was straight forward: “The process was facilitated because of his [General de Sousa] status [as attorney general].”

A possible new trial

After General de Sousa revealed his strategy of focusing on the accusation of the crime against state security, my lawyer complained. At the beginning of the trial the judge made it clear that the trial’s focus would be exclusively on the land question. She did not allow us to present any evidence we had gathered or wanted to submit to prove that Dos Santos had protected the corrupt, nor to make any oral arguments about it.

Now, suddenly, the judge was paying attention and focusing on the second crime. My lawyer, Horácio Junjuvili, argued that the two accusations should not have been bundled together in the first place.

The first one, the alleged insult to public authority, merited the police court procedure (or simplified form procedure) under which I am being tried. It only required the public prosecution charges for the trial to proceed, because it carries a maximum sentence of up to one year in prison.

For the second accusation, on crimes against state security, it must be treated as a common criminal procedure, as it carries a maximum sentence of up to four years. It therefore required a preliminary hearing indictment by the judge. Both accusations had only the charges laid by the public prosecution.

The public prosecutor concurred with my legal counsel, while the plaintiff’s lawyer contested it.

After informal consultations, the judge authorized my lawyer to file a motion requesting the separation of the charges, so I could be tried separately for the crime against state security. “It eases my burden”, she said smiling, stating that she did not want to see me in her courtroom ever again after this case – “too much trouble”.

The trial was adjourned until June 15. The saga continues.

Following his 11-day European tour, Angolan president, João Lourenço, arrived home with a staggering flight bill. He spent several million dollars on a US $74,000 an hour luxurious “flying palace” that transported him the whole time, while preaching anti-corruption at home. The distinguished Ghanaian economist and activist, George Ayittey, has a name for this kind of a leader: a coconut head.

For Ayittey, a coconut head is a leader, who, rather than run his country ruins it through folly and depraved indifference to the suffering of ordinary people.

Many Angolans saw the social media images of the world’s only private US $350 million Boeing Dreamliner 787 VVIP ostentatiousness. Owned by the Chinese  HNA Group, this plane is the world’s largest luxury business charter.

Few wanted to match it with the plane that took President Lourenço to state visits in France and Belgium, as well as a private visit to Spain. Yet, there is only one Dreamliner owned by HNA’s Deer Jet company.

Its luxury awed the press in the uneventful airport of Asturias, Spain. President Lourenço went to the city of Oviedo just for an eye checkup at Clínica Oftalmológica de los Vega, and was followed by a scandalous shopping-spree entourage.

Lourenço generated more news and backlashes at home for his extravaganza than for any accomplishments during his state visits. As a French website reported, accompanied by pictures, the presidential delegation used a fleet of three airplanes, including an executive Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream.

While the President was on tour, at home, the judicial system shutdown for a week due to a nationwide strike. The nurses are set to go on a week-long strike as of June 11, dealing another blow to the moribund health system.

An inside view of the VVIP Dreamliner also dubbed a “flying hotel”.

The Jedi mind trick

There was another event, involving planes, that marred the president’s European visit, and created a social media storm at home. During an interview with Euronews, President Lourenço denied that his own government created a new domestic airliner, Air Connection Express.

However, on March 3, 2018, the state media reported that the Minister of Transport, Augusto da Silva Tomás, issued a statement outlining the government’s vision for the new airliner. He did so during his visit to Canada, where he negotiated with the Canadian company Bombardier.

Two months later, on May 5, Air Connection Express signed a formal deal with Bombardier for the purchase of six Bombardier Dash Q400 planes, for US $198 million, to begin operations in 2019. Minister Augusto da Silva Tomás took part in the ceremony, on behalf of the government.

Bombardier itself posted the news and listed the names of the private Angolan air companies which are part of the Air Connection Express consortium.

Lourenço’s administration provided the sovereign guarantee for the deal. He is now denying it exists. Who is lying? Or is it just Lourenço trying out a Jedi mind trick that “it never happened?” Why?

The state and private consortium aimed at taking over the entire domestic market from the national carrier TAAG.

Led by TAAG, it includes private air companies owned by members of Lourenço’s inner circle. When the deal was announced, this author promptly exposed some of the shareholders of the newly created company. He did so to signal that Lourenço’s team was already busy feeding at the trough. A few cronies are worth mentioning:
• The Minister of State and the President’s Chief of Staff, Frederico Cardoso, is the main shareholder of Air 26, a company that was forbidden to fly for reckless practices, such as no plane maintenance;
• The Minister of State and head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau, General Pedro Sebastião owns Mavewa, a family company that went belly up, and was grounded for a lack of safety procedures.
• The deputy head of the President’s Intelligence Bureau and Lourenço’s brother, General Sequeira João Lourenço, is the owner of SJL Aeronáutica, a family company, now taking off thanks to the brotherhood.
• Although registered in the Aruba, Bestfly, is well known as a company in which the Minister of Transport, Augusto Tomás, is one of the founders and main hidden shareholders.

When asked by Euronews about the author’s public exposé on the deal, Lourenço replied: “This company or consortium, between TAAG and some private companies will not take off, it will not happen”.

He continued: “I challenge the Angolan passengers to tell me, ‘hey sir, you told Euronews that the consortium did not exist, but today I traveled in one of its planes that you-know-who said’. Thus, this is my challenge. I do not only challenge the author of the accusation, but all Angolans, potential passengers of this fictitious company”.

Basically, being in denial will not help the president’s image. Aviation experts and political analysts are in agreement that the Minister of Transport would not have gone to Canada to spearhead the deal, without the knowledge and authorization from the President. That is why Lourenço keeps him on the job, even though the president has undermined his own minister in public.

Nevertheless, why was the president so swift in annulling a deal through an interview, but has been quiet about his extravagant flight expenditures?

In 2017, on average 20 children died a day, just at the main pediatric hospital in Luanda for lack of basic healthcare. This hospital is half a mile from the presidential palace. In the second largest pediatric center, Hospital Américo Boavida, 10 children die a day. Does this mean that the president cares more about his image and luxury extravaganza than the children of Angola?

What the heck is going on with these coconut heads of the continent?

Angola’s public prosecutor, Pedro Pederneira, calls for my conviction for the crimes of insulting a public authority and speaking against the state security (June 15).

He wants me in jail for writing that former President José Eduardo dos Santos protected the corrupt. This is the crime against the state security.

The public prosecution office recently charged Dos Santos’ son, José Filomeno dos Santos, and his accomplices for the looting of US $500 million from Angola’s central bank. The looting had been authorized by the father weeks before he stepped down in September last year. Last January, I was the very first to expose the whole scam at home. So, where is the crime against the state security?

I supplied the court with plenty of evidence on past cases in which Mr. Dos Santos engaged and protected the corrupt, and the then-attorney general never replied to many of my formal complaints about the banditry of those in power.

I submitted four of these cases as evidence summarize my point.

First, on August 13, 2009, I wrote to President José Eduardo dos Santos about how the attorney general was involved in several private business ventures. His public office was managing private companies. That was unconstitutional to say the least. I never received a reply.

Second, on August 8, 2014, I lodged a complaint to the attorney general’s office on how Manuel Vicente, the vice president of the Republic, was at the same time a director of the Hong Kong-based China Sonangol International Holding, a majority Chinese-owned company. That was a clear violation of the constitution, and I never received a reply.

Third, I lodged a complaint to the attorney general’s office on June 16, 2016, on how President Dos Santos authorized the Minister of Finance to buy a tower from his daughter-in-law’s company. Through Presidential Order n.º 182/14, the president ordered the minister to pay U $115.4 million for a tower that was in the early stages of construction.

To his credit, on November 18, 2016, then-attorney general João Maria de Sousa replied to my complaint: “It is in fact a criminal complaint against the President of the Republic.”

He concluded that he had no authority to “initiate criminal proceedings against the President of the Republic, unless it is for crimes foreign to his official duties, and five years after the termination of his mandate. Thus, I dismiss this request.”

However, the attorney general did ignore his duties when it came to investigate the president’s daughter-in-law, Mayra Isungi dos Santos, the son José Filomeno dos Santos “Zenú” and the Minister of Finance, for their part in the corrupt arrangement.

Finally, last year, on January 30, I wrote to the Minister of Justice and the attorney general about the plea agreement the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht had reached with the United States’ Department of Justice. The company admitted that, between 2006 and 2013, it paid over US $50 million in bribes to Angolan government officials to secure contracts worth US $261 million. I asked for the case to be investigated in Angola, including Odebrecht and the said government officials. My request and the evidence provided were met with silence.

I published all these cases. I submitted them in court, among others, to clearly demonstrate how the corrupt have been protected both by the former president as the supervisor of the attorney general, and by General João Maria de Sousa.

The land of the wicked!

On the land acquired by his former boss, then- attorney general João Maria de Sousa, the prosecutor admitted how illegal it was, but exonerated him of corruption and blamed the local administration that issued the deed. It is the exposé of the land, acquired to build a residential condominium, which led to the criminal charges against me. So, it was admitted in court that there was corruption, but no corrupt.

Furthermore, I got tired and sick of hearing about the honor and dignity of the plaintiff. Not a single word was uttered by the prosecution about how the peasants were evicted from that land without compensation, for it to be given to General João Maria de Sousa, who bragged in court to have signed the deed for the three acres without paying a single cent.

In Angola, it seems, only the corrupt and the abusive public office holders have the right to honor and dignity. The common folk can be trampled at will, and the truth does not matter at all.

Judge Josina Ferreira Falcão provided the only light moment when she fended off the plaintiff lawyer’s request for no evidence to be considered on accusation of the crime against the state security. Lawyer João Pedro claimed that his client complained only about his honor and dignity and therefore any other evidence was (out of purpose) beside the point.

She stated that both sides had the right to present evidence as they saw appropriate. As she set the date to decide on the case, she finally had her break to extract a laugh at my expense. “I might have to push the date further to make sure my decision will not end up being criticized by Rafael Marques de Morais as being badly written.”

The judge’s verdict is set for July 6.

When historians come to write the unexpurgated story of corruption in Angola, the chapter on how dual Swiss-Angolan national Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais enriched himself from the Angolan Sovereign Fund is sure to be a page-turner.

Bastos de Morais is the silent partner of the former Sovereign Fund’s chairman, José Filomeno dos Santos (Zenú), the hitherto-untouchable son of former President José Eduardo dos Santos who turned Angola into a kleptocracy during 38 years in power.

The US $5 billion Sovereign Fund was created to stimulate economic diversity – a hedge against the future when Angola’s rich oil reserves run out. Zenú and his buddy Jean-Claude are alleged to have treated the Sovereign Fund as their personal piggy bank and both face charges of fraud and money-laundering.

Zenú’s father used also set up the Angolan Venture Capital Fund (in Portuguese: Fundo Activo de Capital de Risco Angolano, FACRA) in 2012. Under Presidential Decree 108/12 FACRA received US $250 million to kickstart funding for small and medium-sized enterprises.

FACRA was overseen by a three-man supervisory body chaired by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, with a fellow Swiss banker, Marcel Kruse, in charge of the Investment Committee. Since its inception FACRA has never published its accounts as required by law, yet Bastos de Morais and Kruse continued to pocket US $3 million a year for their so-called ‘management’ fees.

Records show that they transferred FACRA’s capital to a private management company named Kwanza Gestão de Participações Empresariais S.A. (KGPE), which is itself 99.99% owned by Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI).

The fact that FACRA, KGPE and BKI all shared the same office address (Avenida Comandante Jika No. 150) should have raised a red flag. Even a cursory examination would have revealed a blatant conflict of interest given that the FACRA Supervisory Board chair, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, was also the majority shareholder of BKI (with an 85% stake). Records show that KGPE went on to funnel funds into companies set up by Bastos de Morais and his associates.

Bastos de Morais is a colourful character, simultaneously under investigation for alleged fraud in Switzerland, Mauritius and the United Kingdom as well as Angola.

Along with José Filomeno dos Santos, he is accused of widespread misappropriation of public funds, using BKI to launder and divert millions of dollars into the multiple shell companies they set up. Yet in spite of his recent indictment in Angola he remains at the helm of FACRA.

How did he operate? One example: FACRA pays one monthly fee for unspecified services to Afrique Imo Corporation S.A., a company 90% owned by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais. It pays a second lot of fees for ‘staff recruitment’ to Uniqua, a company owned by Jean-Claude’s mistress Manuela Ganga. And it pays a third amount for ‘IT services’ to Swiss-registered Stampa Equus S.A. (General Manager, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais).

Another example: in 2014 FACRA made a US $6 million loan to a company named B’weza S.A. based in the Angolan capital, Luanda – a start-up which describes itself as engaged in the ‘social banking business’. Four years on the B’weza website remains “under construction”, empty except for a single banner promising: “We’ll be with you shortly”.

B’weza’s commercial manager, a Portuguese citizen named Rui Teixeira, says the company is owned by Quantum Global. Quantum Global is owned by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais. B’weza S.A. is a subsidiary of B’weza International AG, founded in Switzerland in 2012 and managed by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais.

Also in 2014, FACRA invested in a company named Touch & Talk, set up by KGPE to promote and develop mobile banking. This was another shell company set up by Bastos de Morais and Kruse as a vehicle for diverting FACRA funds into their own accounts. The lawyer representing FACRA in the transaction was Bastos de Morais’ own personal lawyer, Joana Filipe Lima da Silva Simplício de Oliveira – a further conflict of interest.

Having amassed a fortune from his Angolan dealings, Bastos de Morais hired top-ranking legal and PR firms – Schillings – to polish his international image and create a veneer of respectability, passing himself off – even to the venerable Financial Times – as a masterful international investor and trusted advisor to the Dos Santos administration. He wrote:

“Angola’s government has been working hard to incentivise small businesses by offering attractive tax regimes to foreign investors (particularly outside of Luanda). Venture capital firms are also playing an increasingly important role in helping to facilitate growth with SME’s. One such is the Angola-based Fundo Activo de Capital de Risco Angolano (FACRA), of whose supervisory committee I am a member.
It is a public venture capital fund that specifically supports Angolan SME’s in building, innovating and expanding their businesses.”

What Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais failed to mention was that, in practice, FACRA’s money was mainly being siphoned into a bank and companies owned by himself and his associates.

The fact that the Angolan Attorney General’s Office has brought charges against Bastos de Morais, and his once ‘untouchable’ Angolan partner Zenú appears to be a small step towards justice. But unlike smaller fry accused of fraud and corruption in Angola, these three are not in custody awaiting trial. Astonishingly, Bastos de Morais remains at the helm of FACRA and he and Kruse continue to collect their US $3 million a year salaries.

(Acceptance speech for the International Press Institute’s World Press Freedom Hero Award received on June 22 in Abuja, Nigeria.)

When the news of this award reached Angola, many of my countrymen and women posted images of me as Wakanda’s Black Panther on their social media. This award is not for me. It mirrors the hopes of many Angolans that changes will not come simply from political decision-making, but from a growing awareness amongst and stand from civil society.

Looting of the state, human rights abuses, corruption and political contempt for the suffering of the people are the main ills of the Angolan society where the powerful take away what rightfully belongs to everyone and trample on others’ lives.

The investigative journalism I’ve engaged in through Maka Angola
in a hostile environment has spearheaded the renewal of hopes that among ordinary Angolans a force for good can be reckoned with. To be an independent journalist in Angola is to fight for the very space and for the right to work as one. And, it makes one an activist too.

It is for these hopeful Angolans, and with a greater sense of responsibility, but without the Black Panther’s suit, that I humbly accept this award.

I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the National Endowment for Democracy that, for the past six years, has provided me with the core support to continue my work with my head above water. I also take this opportunity to thank the staff, friends, and sources who have been extremely supportive of Maka Angola. Many have rallied behind me anew as I am currently expecting a verdict on July 6, after another trial for exposing the corrupt.

Angola is a country where the most corrupt people do not have to face trial; and, they are starting to take pride in merely being charged with corruption. We call them “os arguidos”.

My teenaged son wants to study business so he can have the resources to support my independence and empower me to escalate the fight for freedom of the press and expression, good governance and human rights. He has a holistic approach.

I hope by the time he succeeds there will be a new Angola for him to contribute to in which its development and freedom of the press and of expression will be taken for granted.

My trial and tribulations have prevented me from being here with you today. My Kenyan brother, John Githongo, who has been an inspiration to me as an anti-corruption campaigner, honors me by receiving this award in my stead. As pan-Africanists, we are stronger as we stand in solidarity.

I’m most grateful to the International Press Institute for this gift of hope that many Angolans are celebrating as their own triumph over the entrenched power of its [country’s] bandits.

Thank you!

P.S. Watch the video here.

Angola’s central bank, the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) has failed to produce its accounts for the second year running, with the current BNA Governor, José de Lima Massano, forced to issue a written explanation to the Angolan President.

In so doing, Massano has brought to light a convoluted financial arrangement, sanctioned by one of his predecessors, in which the BNA unlawfully acted as guarantor for a US $200 million foreign loan for a private bank, the Banco de Negócios Internacional (BNI). Angola’s Banking Laws authorize the BNA to intervene to help a private bank only as a lender of last resort to inject liquidity during a temporary crisis, and only on condition that the private bank has sufficient collateral in non-liquid assets. The BNI case did not meet the criteria on any count.

It is further alleged that the loan was obtained under false pretences, and that the BNI did not use the loan funds for their contractually-agreed purpose of funding social housing, but instead unlawfully diverted some or all of the funds into a subsidiary offshore financial institution in Cape Verde, set up and wholly owned by BNI shareholders.

BNI subsequently defaulted on the repayments, leaving the BNA burdened with the bad debt. It has led to calls for a full criminal investigation.

Keeping it all in the (presidential) family

The Banco Nacional de Angola may have been pressured into acting beyond its legal remit because the BNI shareholders were all either family members or close associates of the then President, José Eduardo dos Santos. One of his daughters, Welwitschea dos Santos (known as Tchizé), and her brother José Eduardo Paulino dos Santos (known as Coréon Dú) held 13.34% and 6.64% of stock in BNI respectively.

The bank’s founder and majority shareholder was Mário Palhares, a former BNA Deputy Governor. Other shareholders included the son of José Pedro de Morais Júnior (who would briefly serve as BNA Governor in 2015-16).

The BNI obtained its licence to operate in 2006 and immediately looked overseas for funding, finally arranging a US $200 million loan from the Banco Português de Negócios (BPN) for the exclusive purpose of providing mortgages for social housing and agriculture. As surety, it arranged for the BPN loan to be backed by a BNA guarantee, offered by Amadeu Maurício, the governor at that time. In exchange, the BNI offered as collateral to the BNA a lien on the mortgages of the real estate to be funded by the loan.

Five years later, the BNI had repaid only US $39 million and was failing to meet the repayment schedule. BPN became insolvent and was temporarily nationalized by the Portuguese government before being sold on for 40 million Euros to BIC Angola, a bank headed by President Dos Santos’s eldest daughter, Isabel. Shortly afterwards the BPN’s name was changed to BIC, then changed again to EuroBic. As BNI was technically in default, the creditor (formerly the BPN, now reincarnated as EuroBic) called in the BNA guarantee.

Thus the Banco Nacional de Angola found itself required to cough up US $161 million to a private bank whose majority shareholder was their President’s daughter, Isabel, to settle a debt incurred by another private bank involving two more of his children as shareholders.

Such convolutions may sound familiar to those with a forensic interest in the intricate web of the Dos Santos family’s financial affairs. Presidential family members and their military and political allies routinely joined together in varying formations to create a network of business alliances. All the participants made stratospheric fortunes. Regulatory oversight of the resulting sprawl of enterprises was non-existent.

The primary qualification for setting up a new bank or business in Angola was to secure with inflated remuneration one or more of the Dos Santos cohort as a shareholder or silent partner. The BNI set up was therefore unremarkable. The shareholders in BNI from the start had set up an offshore subsidiary in Cape Verde: the Banco Privado Internacional, IFI, S.A. (BPI). This allowed them to “reinvest” (or divert) funds into BPI, allegedly for their own benefit.

Follow the money

Unsurprisingly, many of the Dos Santos cohort are wanted in various jurisdictions on suspicion of fraud, money-laundering and other financial crimes. Two Dos Santos appointees as BNA Governors, Amadeu Maurício (2002-2009) and José Pedro de Morais Júnior (2015-16) are accused of involvement in a US $45 million fraud and corruption investigation in France and Brazil. A third, Valter Filipe (2016-2017) is implicated in an attempt by another of the Dos Santos sons, Zenú, to defraud the state, thwarted by the financial authorities in the UK.

Maka Angola was unable to find evidence of BNI investment in social housing or agricultural projects. However one project it did finance was an exclusive residential condominium where Isabel dos Santos, Mário Palhares, Amadeu Maurício, José Pedro de Morais Jr. and even José de Lima Massano all have luxury residences.

Meanwhile, the Banco Nacional de Angola had ceased to be the BNI’s guarantor and become its creditor, having settled the outstanding US $161 million of the Portuguese loan with EuroBic. The records show that the BNI undertook to repay this sum over four years with annual interest of 2.8% from January 2013. The BNI set up a fiduciary instrument, named Depósito Angola+4YR 2012 for the repayment schedule, recording it as an asset so the BNA would not have a US $146 million-shaped hole in its accounts.

After repaying a mere US $15 million, the BNI sought a variance, to extend the repayment period to six years at 3% interest from 2014. The BNA agreed to this too.

The BNI offered as security for the debt, three Luanda real estate properties listed in the accounts as “assets not for personal use” and appraised as being worth US $44 million which BNI claimed was equivalent to 30% of the value of the debt, added to future accounts receivable from a firm named Mar Grandioso (the promoter of China Dreal Group’s Jardim de Rosas condos) and others “for the future contractual value of property sales in Angola amounting to US $90 million.”

In 2015 José Pedro de Morais Jr. took over as Governor of the National Bank of Angola. His son Ivan Leite de Morais held 5.39% of BNI stock. Within the year, the BNI asked the BNA “not to register any imbalance regarding the “operation” (the US $146 million debt) in order to balance its accounts and to create an investment vehicle for the BNI to transfer their assets, both passive (existing deposits) and active (property projects). Handily, the BNI already had such a vehicle, in Cape Verde.

In March 2017 the BNA asked BNI for an updated appraisal of the properties it was now offering as active assets to pay off the debt. These were the plots of land in Luanda that the BNI had initially valued at US US $44 million in 2014 at the height of the property boom in Angola.

The 2017 land appraisal was conducted by a firm named Proprime Lda., a company that had previously made stratospheric appraisals of land (the 2013 Escom scandal, in which land was fraudulently sold to five ghost companies for US $500 million). Proprime appraised the three lots as worth US $179 million, even though the property market had plummeted.

The National Bank rejected BNI’s offer as advantageous only to BNI.

BNI Chief Mário Palhares argued that the BNA, under José Pedro de Morais Júnior, had already given approval to the scheme “for early repayment by means of a parcel of active assets located in Angola and the BPI/Cape Verde’s corresponding rights to them.” But with Valter Filipe in charge, the National Bank demurred, demanding the BNI comply with the terms of the repayment agreement.

Instead, the BNA was outmanoeuvred. In 2016, Angola’s Finance Ministry had set up Recredit, with two billion Euros from state funds, to buy up any bad debt owned by state enterprises and commercial banks.

By June 2017, BNI had signed an agreement with Recredit Asset Management to take over its debt to the BNA. This transferred legal responsibility to Recredit to pay off the debt in Angolan Kwanzas, a risible amount when compared to the real sum in US dollars.

For the BNA this still left an embarrassing hole in its annual accounts that it did not want to make public – until asked by President João Lourenço to provide a full explanation. Angola now awaits his reaction.

Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, the Swiss-Angolan ‘businessman’ who is accused of masterminding a conspiracy to defraud the Angolan Republic of untold millions of dollars, is enjoying life as a free man in Angola, despite being the subject of police investigations and criminal and civil lawsuits in several countries.

Why, when he faces such serious criminal and civil charges in connection with his (mis)management of US $3 billion of the Angolan sovereign wealth fund and alleged fraud and money-laundering, is Mr. Bastos de Morais at liberty to continue to run the Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI) and the controversial project to build and run the Caio deep sea port project in Cabinda province?

He is said to have amassed an enormous fortune largely thanks to his association with one of the sons of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos: José Filomeno, nicknamed Zenú. In one of his many acts of outright nepotism, the former President put Zenú in charge of Angola’s sovereign fund, the Fundo Soberano de Angola (FSDEA), and Zenú appears to have handed the entire sum (US $5 billion) to Bastos de Morais to manage. The latter himself has boasted that the idea of a sovereign fund was his in the first place and that Zenú was too dumb to know how to manage it.

The two men now face charges, including conspiracy to defraud the Angolan state, in Angola, Switzerland and the UK. Experts in international financial fraud and money-laundering, including the highly respected Tom Keatinge of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), say this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are strong indications that the entire US$5 billion sovereign fund was placed at risk.

When he’s not conducting international PR campaigns to boast about his philanthropy and investment acumen, Bastos sits on the boards of respectable institutions, such as the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In Angola, he tries to fly under the radar. And yet, his businesses and private life have been the subject of much speculation, as has the closeness of his friendship with Zenú.

A convicted criminal

Bastos is already a convicted criminal, found guilty by a Swiss court in 2011, along with his business associate Marcel Kruse, of “repeated qualified criminal mismanagement” of companies. The two did not appeal and paid a portion only of their fines, the larger part suspended for two years and forfeit only if they reoffended. Presumably they were so relieved to have escaped a lengthy prison sentence for illegally diverting funds they were supposed to manage on behalf of others into their own pockets that they declined to appeal the sentence.

A former associate, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that when Bastos became aware he was under investigation by the Swiss authorities back in 2007, he left behind his Swiss wife and three children to decamp to Angola with Manuela Ganga, his long-term girlfriend and mother to another one of his children. There he set up his home in a rented seafront apartment just meters from the luxurious Hotel Presidente in Luanda. For a while he kept a very low profile, moving on to another rental, this time a two-story gated family home in the district of Alvalade.

Behind the scenes, however, he was busy. In 2008 he set up the Banco Quantum, renamed in 2010 as the Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI), with Zenú, and habitual associates Marcel Krause and a former German Central Bank (Bundesbank) CEO, Ernst Welteke. Astonishingly, he continues to manage it, releasing a statement just last month that the freezing of 91 accounts related to his Quantum group of companies by the authorities in Mauritius had no bearing on his activities with BKI.

That raised a few eyebrows. Bastos de Morais, Krause and Welteke have a long history of using banks and shell companies set up across various jurisdictions (preferably in tax havens), which they used for money transfers that are now the subject of money-laundering investigations.

In spite of the legal obligation to disclose any criminal conviction, Bastos de Morais apparently managed to “forget” to mention it in a range of business dealings thereafter, not least in setting up his Quantum group of companies from the tax haven of Mauritius, which benefited so richly from Angolan state funds.

The sovereign cash cow

Swiss journalist Christian Brönniman conducted an in-depth investigation into Bastos de Morais, in the wake of revelations from the Paradise Papers, interviewing him in person last year. He found that the Angolan sovereign fund monies that had been invested had been put into seven mutual funds set up in 2014 and 2015 by Quantum Global in Mauritius.

In 2014, when only two of the funds were active – and for only seven months of that year – Quantum received US$ 29 million in management fees. In that same period a further US$ 13 million was paid in dividends to QG Investment Ltd, another Bastos-owned company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, another tax haven. Various other Bastos-owned companies received US$120 million that same year for “consulting services.”

Legal and financial experts say such fees were far in excess of the global standard for sovereign fund asset management and that there is no legal or commercial justification for them.

Bastos was profiting handsomely from what he described as his “brainchild”. It allowed him to have his fingers in many pies. One of the most high-profile is his involvement in the construction of the Caio deep-sea port in Cabinda in which he claims to have sunk a ‘personal’ investment of some US$70 million – not even half the money he’d pocketed from the FSDEA.

With no prior experience of deep sea ports or their construction, and without the project being subjected to public tender, Bastos de Morais was using money from the sovereign wealth fund, managed by his company Quantum Global, to “invest” in another company he had set up to build and manage the facility under a sweetheart deal. In the wake of revelations in the so-called Paradise Papers, Bastos de Morais was the subject of a scathing report that questioned the conflicts of interest from which he was benefiting so richly. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bastos de Morais denied any conflict of interest, referring to “aligned interests”.

Perhaps by this he was alluding to a shared interest with Zenú and other associates in lining their own pockets at the expense of the Angolan people?

Unsurprisingly, as this business reporter noted, the FSDEA’s annual reports did not publish any details of its investments nor details of the flow of funds between its asset manager Quantum Global and all the other entities owned or controlled by Bastos de Morais. However, Quantum and Bastos had worked with the Appleby Law Firm both in Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands. Hundreds of Appleby documents turned up in the Paradise Papers revealing the self-serving deals. Appleby documented their fear that Bastos was a “high risk” client due to his proximity to the Angolan power apparatus. Were international auditors KPMG complicit? Documentary evidence shows they also recognized this risk and advised Appleby to effect a rapid transfer of the Quantum companies to Lichtenstein.

The way Quantum worked was that for each of the seven funds, an “investment committee” involving Bastos and others would advise on investments. The Appleby papers included Quantum Investment Committee minutes that contained the incontrovertible evidence that in addition to the Caio Port, there were at least three other occasions in which the committee decided money should be invested in projects in which Bastos held an interest.

One was for a hotel to be built alongside the Caio Port, involving an “investment” of US$ 20 million to Messo Mi Tchoa, S.A. The owner is unknown but Bastos recused himself from voting for this on the grounds of a “conflict of interest” according to the committee minutes.

José Filomeno dos Santos “Zenú”, the former head of the Sovereign Fund and long-time friend of Bastos de Morais.

Another was a Quantum recommendation that the timber fund commit up to US$89 million to a pine and eucalyptus plantation – another decision from which Bastos recused himself because of a “conflict of interest”.

And then there was the High Tech Tower planned for Luanda. The minutes showed the hotel fund agreed to spend US$157 million to buy into the project, US$100 million to take over the debt already incurred by another investor “High Tech Tower One Ltd,” and the remaining US$57 million to be paid in cash instalments after HTT One received the rights to the land for the tower project from a company named Afrique Imo Corporation, S.A. The beneficial owner of both HTT One and Afrique Imo was Bastos de Morais.

Interestingly, Bastos de Morais did not deny any of this when questioned for The Guardian report on the Paradise Papers’ revelations. In a letter, he argued that as a “shareholder in the investments, his goals were aligned with those of the Fund” and volunteered the information that there were further projects under consideration.

Maka Angola has repeatedly published information from scandalized whistleblowers close to various schemes involving Zenú and Bastos de Morais.

Other criminal investigations led to the recent raids on Bastos companies in Switzerland and Mauritius. In May, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported that federal tax authorities raided Quantum’s Zug-based headquarters and his Turtle Management offices in Zurich. In June, it was revealed that Mauritius had frozen 91 accounts connected to Bastos entities in that country due to what the authorities called “a serious risk of dissipation or unlawful transfer of funds”.

Angola versus Bastos de Morais et al.

Apparently both these developments came as a result of a lawsuit currently before the British High Court of Justice, filed by Norton Rose Fulbright LLP on behalf of the Angolan sovereign fund, which cites Zenú, Bastos de Morais and a further 19 co-defendants (four Quantum companies and seven general partners belonging to the Quantum Global group, as well as seven limited partnerships connected to them) and a 21st defendant, the Northern Trust bank, referred to only by the initials “NT,” which held the US $5 billion from the FSDEA in accounts in London subject to the instructions of one of the Quantum companies; US $3 billion of which was transferred into accounts held in the names of those Limited Partnerships.

The details of the lawsuit make it clear that Quantum continued to charge fees based on the entire US $3 billion even after US $2.27 billion was drawn down and instead of being reinvested, was simply stored as cash. Over a five-year period, the ‘Quantum Defendants’ and ‘General Partners’ charged the FSDEA US $500 million “which is not commensurate with or justified by reference to the services actually provided”.

Angola is seeking the return of the entire sovereign fund sum and fees as well as equitable compensation and punitive damages.

Consulted by Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Financial Crime at the British think-tank RUSI concluded: “Whoever approved the structure and operations on the side of the Angolan [sovereign wealth fund] is either highly incompetent or complicit. Such a structure has only one goal: to hide something, namely the true beneficiaries of transactions.”

A prominent beneficiary was of course Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais who paid himself enormous dividends: US$13 million in 2014 and US$28 million in 2015. He spent some of it on two custom Lexus SUVs in Europe, sending them to Canada to be armoured at an estimated cost of US $80,000 each. Might he have anything in particular to fear?

If he does, he has the means to make a speedy getaway. He also forked out some US $30 million on a private jet: a luxurious Dassault Falcon 7x from Russian billionaire (and Arsenal co-owner) Alisher Usmanov. Bastos registered the jet in Switzerland and public records show it has been used for flights to Angola, Namibia, China, Switzerland and the Spanish holiday island of Ibiza.

Surely it’s only a matter of time before Bastos uses it to flee Angola or any other jurisdiction in which he might face justice? Under these circumstances, Angolans have every right to wonder why this man is not in custody pending his trial.

Just think for a minute. In a two-year span, a father gave his daughter, among several contracts, four that were worth over US $22 billion. The father is then President José Eduardo dos Santos, and the daughter is Isabel, Africa’s richest woman. These were the golden days of the presidential family’s capture of Angola. Period.

In the past month, with a stroke of a pen, General João Lourenço has annulled the four egregious contracts. The former “princess” is crying foul, and is threatening to sue the Angolan state however, the state is calling out her bluff. Her fortune is about to tumble like a house of cards, just as her father’s power fell flat once he left office after 38 years.

Through her father’s presidential decrees, Isabel built her fortune. Now, ironically, the man her father personally chose to replace him is first and foremost taking away the family’s fortunes that are tied with the state, thus recapturing it from their thieving hands.

Let us just review these four contracts.

The master plan

In 2015, Dos Santos appointed his daughter to lead the Luanda Metropolitan Master Plan, budgeted at US $15 billion, to revamp the capital city. Therefore, her shell company, Urbinvest, had the monopoly of the project.

Back in the day, there was no one smarter and more competent in the country than Isabel dos Santos. Public tender, and transparency became silly anti-development jargon even for foreign investors whose main mission had become to partner with the power gatekeepers. There was an international spin that cast Isabel dos Santos as a positive story for Africa, as she was hailed the most successful businesswoman on the continent. And the reality of her looting of the country under her kleptocratic father was downplayed or outright ignored.

Dams for the Damned

That same year, through Presidential Order 58/15, Dos Santos also awarded Isabel dos Santos the construction of the Caculo-Cabaça dam and hydropower station for US $4.5 billion.

The powerful China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) had initially entered into a 50/50 consortium with Isabel’s shell company, Niara Holding, to win the contract and build the dam. The Industrial Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) secured the financing for Angolan oil in return. A year later, inexplicably Dos Santos signed another order adding an extra US $500 million for the daughter’s joint venture, thus totaling US $5 billion. Somewhat generous, she lowered her share in the joint-venture to 40%.

What was the rationale for this dam? It will be built 19 kilometers away from the recently built dam and hydropower station of Laúca, which cost over US $4 billion. It will be the fourth dam and hydropower station built along the same River Kwanza in a stretch of some 130 kilometers.

Corimba coastal road

Another one Isabel dos Santos’ contracts slashed by President Lourenço is the planned 7 km coastal road from Luanda’s city center to the Corimba neighborhood, which would include an area of 400 hectares reclaimed from the sea. This is a contract worth over US $700 million, to be financed by the International and Commercial Bank of China and the Chinese Eximbank. Her company Urbinvest S.A had the monopoly of the project, which would include 700 hectares “of high density mixed-use residential and commercial development”.

The Port

Last August, while everyone was busy with the elections, Dos Santos was looting to the last minute to leave as much business ventures as possible to his family. He signed the Presidential Decree 207/17 that granted Isabel dos Santos’ Atlantic Ventures S.A the contract to build and have the exclusive management rights to the port for 30 years (plus 15).

Unsurprisingly, the state provided the sovereign guarantee for this shell company, which had been fully registered the month before, to secure US $1.5 billion in funding for the operation. Furthermore, the state Port Authority (Porto de Luanda) was instructed to buy 40% shares of the newly established company for an undisclosed amount.

Now, Isabel dos Santos wants to sue the state for an alleged breach of contract. On June 20, in a scathing rebuttal of her statement, the Ministry of Transport called out her father’s abuse of power and her lies.

The legal argument used by Isabel dos Santos’ enterprise is quite baffling: “The law applicable for this project is the Law on the Port Concessions and it was correctly applied by the former government in this case. The Law on Public Contracts – which could have demanded the holding of a public tender – does not apply to contracts for Port Concessions, as the current government underscores now.”

According to the Ministry of Transport’s press release, José Eduardo dos Santos awarded the contract without any tender and “without observing any formalisms”.

Furthermore, the ministry called out Isabel dos Santos’ lie that “Atlantic Ventures was set up as a partnership including national and international investors who are leaders in the port industry”. It also made clear that the state would cough up the investment.

The government revealed the names fronting for Isabel dos Santos as shareholders of Atlantic Ventures S.A. Her cousin and personal lawyer, Fidel Kiluanje Araújo, holds 99% of the share, while four other sidekicks equally split the remaining one percent. The government says that it is public knowledge that none of the names mentioned have any background experience to undertake such a major project, and that neither Isabel dos Santos nor any foreign investor is part of the said company.

Legal analyst Rui Verde has studied the laws applicable to the contract and simply writes that Atlantic Ventures S.A legal argument does not fly: “There is no legal norm that makes an exception of public tender for a port concession contract. Thus, it must be subjected to the normal procedures for administrative contracts. That is the Law on Public Contracts (Law 9/16) [of 2016].”

The nightmares to come

Isabel dos Santos’ insatiable greed to devour Angola’s political economy was only matched by her own arrogance that the country was hers for the taking.

In 2016, when her father appointed her to head the National Oil Company Sonangol, Isabel dos Santos had it all in her pocket. She finally had the oil sector at the tip of her fingers, just as she had all the diamonds (Angola is the fifth largest producer in the world). Through the usual presidential power, the then first daughter’s companies had the exclusive rights to sell Angolan diamonds abroad (in partnership with the state on paper).

However, Lourenço’s broom swept her out of Sonangol. The blunt official justification to push her out of the diamond selling venture said it all: Her partnership with the state only represented losses for the latter and gains for her. It was broad daylight robbery. She also threatened to sue the state diamond company Sodiam for cutting her loose.

What goes around, comes around

But it is her brazen tenure in Sonangol and her intersected business interests with the State giant that underscores her rise and fall. They are all at risk of being severed as well, and one of them represents the core of her fortune. That is the telecom company UNITEL, in which both Sonangol and Isabel dos Santos have each 25% stakes. Sonangol was the initial investor in UNITEL, and there is no record that shows that she ever paid for her shares.

In the coming months, the Paris based International Court of Arbitration will decide on a US $3.5 billion lawsuit against her mainly. Portugal Telecom Ventures (taken over by the Brazilian telecom giant Oi) holds 25% of UNITEL and lodged the complaint to reclaim unpaid dues worth US $600 million. The company is also suing for Isabel dos Santos’ self-serving management of the company’s revenues.

During her daddy’s reign, Isabel dos Santos used UNITEL as her piggy bank. Between 2012 and 2013, UNITEL lent US $465 million to UNITEL International Holdings (100% owned by Isabel dos Santos) without the shareholders consent, for her business shopping sprees in Portugal. She simultaneously signed the contracts as the representative of the lender (UNITEL) and debtor (UNITEL International Holding), and set a 10 years maturity and 1% interest rate to pay back the debt. Notwithstanding, another Isabel’s 100% owned company, Tokeyna, bought UNITEL’s credit to her. The accounting verified by Maka Angola shows that, the telecom company lost in the process US $315 million with such shuffling.

However, in 2014, the same Isabel dos Santos forfeited to receive her US $322 million dividend, which was converted into a loan for UNITEL with a 12% interest rate. Consequently, as the accounts demonstrate, UNITEL lost US $315 million with the loan it provided to Isabel dos Santos, and she made a clean US $35 million profit by lending to UNITEL a year after. Last year, she withdrew US $458 million in dividends and debts from the telecom, including US $265 million for 2017. In essence, she started the process of leaving “no money behind”.

It is rumored that Sonangol is set to push her out of UNITEL by demanding a payback for all her wrongdoings. That would mean her fall from one of the main Angolan private banks, Banco Fomento de Angola (BFA), in which the telecom has a 51% stake. Isabel dos Santos controls it, and sits on the board as its vice-president. Her personal lawyer, Jorge Brito Pereira (a Portuguese citizen) is the chairman of the bank’s General Assembly, while her fortune manager, Mário Leite da Silva (another Portuguese citizen) is the chairman of the board.

Without the Angolan cash cows, Isabel’s empire in Portugal, where she parked much of her international investments, will also become unsustainable. They depend on the former colony’s easy pickings.

Ultimately, this is the disheartening tale of an African woman who chose to be an insensitive and insatiable robber baron when she had the opportunity to be a transformer. She could have done some good for her own country and people, and still be filthy rich. Now it is the path of infamy…

It may have looked like ‘easy pickings’. The property market in Angola was booming: extreme shortages of decent housing in the face of overwhelming demand (especially in the capital, Luanda) meant that hotel rates and rents had soared to become the highest of any city in the world.

For non-Angolans with capital to invest, offers of bonds and equity in joint-venture companies promising a multi-million dollar portfolio of properties with guaranteed monthly income, seemed a sure-fire prospect. But as with any investment that offers a high return, there is often high risk. And nowhere more so than when dealing with the kleptocracy that ruled Angola for four decades.

As ongoing lawsuits in both Angola and the USA have shown, it is all too easy for well-connected Angolans to swindle their foreign partners, and get away with it. Just ask Africa Growth Corporation (known by its acronyms AGC* or AFCO) (*See ‘Corporate Alphabet Soup’ below)

AGC is the product of a 2016 merger between the US-registered Brenham Oil and Gas Corp. and Angola International Capital, a subsidiary of Africa International Capital, set up and registered in Bermuda in 2014 by US citizen Christopher Mark Darnell* (*see ‘Cast of Characters’, below).

At the time of the merger, Darnell was already in partnership with Captain Miguel Kenehele de Andrade*, a well-connected Angolan businessman whose father, General António Francisco de Andrade* was a veteran of the Angolan Armed Forces. Miguel Andrade fronted a group of Angolan companies including the ADV* stable, and had acquired land in a prime seafront location, allegedly with money supplied by his US partners, to build condominiums. Darnell’s AIC and its various offshoots were set up to raise more money from foreign investors to acquire this real estate, finish the developments and administer the luxury apartments which would attract high-end clients.

Darnell and Andrade then registered several more Angolan companies to manage the three developments: the ISHA I, ISHA II and PINA projects. In all there would be 100 luxury apartments with guaranteed services, not just essential utilities but concierge services and the requisite high security.

The real power behind the Andrade business network however was not Miguel, but his father, the well-connected (but politically-exposed) General António de Andrade. Once the General was retired into the Reserve and could openly engage in business, he is alleged to have used his personal lawyer Fumwathu Gahuma Guilherme* to arrange a bogus one-man ‘board meeting’ to oust the AGC-appointed administration and put himself in charge, with the ultimate aim of transferring all the assets into companies owned or controlled by his family without having to buy out his son’s American partners.

THE TAKEOVER

In September 2017, the General was unveiled as the Administrator of a company named Ausral Angola Lda., which unilaterally announced the dissolution of the ADV agreement with AGC. Within weeks Darnell had resigned, passing the buck to his business associate Brenton Kuss* (a former KPMG* Manager and AGC CFO) who became interim CEO.

The man sent to retrieve the company documents in August 2017, including proofs of ownership, was none other than US citizen Christopher Sugrue* – like Christopher Darnell, a University of Chicago alumnus. Sugrue is a former hedge fund trader whose company PlusFunds* Group Inc was caught in the fall-out from the notorious Refco fraud. Sugrue (a former Refco executive VP) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and PlusFunds was dissolved in 2006.

There is documentary evidence that Sugrue was one of the investors in the Angola Property Group (APG) and that he was also an associate of Christopher Darnell. Sugrue, along with Ildefonso Massanga*, lawyers and two police officers, retrieved the essential paperwork in the face of a torrent of verbal assault and threats from another member of the Andrade family, General António’s daughter Natasha*, a public prosecutor who then improperly abused her position to order his arrest. It later emerged that ownership of the land had been transferred to Natasha, who is currently suspended pending a disciplinary process.

COURT ORDERS IGNORED

Up against the de facto occupation of their asset and the intimidation deployed by the Andrade family, AGC sought redress through the Angolan Justice system and won. In November 2017 a judge ordered the Andrade family to return the properties in dispute. A farcical merry-go-round then ensued.

Initially, the Angolan national police force enforced the court order, evicting the Andrades and their representatives. However, once the police had left, the General returned with armed guards and forcibly re-occupied the administration offices. The foreign investors went back to the Angolan court and obtained another order in December 2017 but to date it has proven impossible to shift the Andrades.

So AGC filed suit in Washington, D.C. seeking US $55 million in compensation from the Andrade group and adding two of the General’s political allies to the lawsuit, claiming that the Luanda provincial governor, General Higino Carneiro, and the Angolan Attorney-General, General João Maria de Sousa, were complicit in assisting their brother-in-arms to seize AGC’s assets.

The case alleging the “illegal dispossession of estate in Angola” is currently before Judge Beryl Howell. AGC says the Angolan shareholders used forged documents, intimidation and force of arms to seize, expropriate and illegally transfer the American assets into Andrade’s possession, without due process or compensation.

Rear of the Isha residential apartment building. It includes 80 apartments, and costed 20 million dollars.

DEAL, WHAT DEAL?

In spite of the documentary evidence produced by AGC, General Andrade denies there was ever a deal with the US-registered firm. In a letter to the Jornal de Angola dated November 28th, 2017, General Andrade only admits the existence of a partnership between the firm BLOX Construções, S.A., and the Angola Property Group from 2008-2015 which when terminated, resulted in a dispute between the Andrade family and two foreign investors: Cristopher Sugrue and Omer Gal (an Israeli citizen).

In the interim Angola had a change of President and regime, with João Lourenço promising to clean house and sacking many of the corrupt placeholders installed by his predecessor José Eduardo dos Santos, including the Attorney-General. Dos Santos was promised lifetime immunity and many of those who profited hugely under his regime remain too powerful to be confronted head on, as yet. But the new regime is chipping away at the general impunity enjoyed by an entire echelon of self-enriching military and government officials, and prosecutions of the minnows are well underway.

This may not give any comfort to the Andrades’ erstwhile partners in AGC – and far less to anyone who invested in their property deals. The small print (as in their annual filing to the SEC) warned that Angola was a high-risk investment with no guarantees and it looks ever more likely that anyone who bet on AGC and its numerous subsidiaries may lose every cent. As the old saying goes: “if you like down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

CORPORATE ALPHABET SOUP

ADV (ANGOLA DEVELOPMENT VENTURES): a recurring name and acronym in companies linked to the Andrades. In July 2013, ADV is listed with the National Private Investment Agency (Agencia Nacional de Investimento Privado Resolução 64/3) as having certified a foreign investment of US$3,482,000 to buy a 99% stake in AGPV Lda. The Paradise Papers revealed the connections between many of the ADV (and other) brands linked to the Andrades such as ADV Inc, ADV Holding Ltd., ADV International Ltd., ADV Leases Ltd., APG Phulasos Ltd., QuesCom Inernational Ltd. and the Angola Development Group.

Angola Development Ventures Incorporated was set up in the British Virgin Islands in 2011 along with ADV International Ltd., and ADV Holding Ltd. ADV Holding Ltd and ADV Leases Ltd. are also registered in the UK and share the same address at 100 Crawford St. in London. Miguel Kenehele de Sousa Andrade was also registered as a Director of Crescat Excolatur, S.A., registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The ADV also own subsidiary companies named Maximilio and QuesCom which provide security and concierge services to the Pina and Isha apartment complexes.

On August 28, 2017, Miguel Andrade was no longer a director for ADV Holding Ltd. but, according to official documents, he held a one-man general assembly. He appointed his father as a manager of AGPV (see below), which has direct ownership of the residential buildings Isha and Pina. The next step was the easy transfer of the assets to the Andrade’s family ownership with the “help” of state institutions, and the booting of the foreign investors out the business.

As soon as he retired from active service, General Andrade also appeared as the administrator of a company named Ausral, which unilaterally announced a “dissolution of (its) agreement with AGC” on 01 Sep 2017. Both Christopher Darnell and Pavlos Papageorgiou also appear on the books as partners and the only directors in ADV Holding Ltd.

APG (ANGOLA PROPERTY GROUP) is just one of a (deliberately-confusing) web of companies all connected to each other in some way or another by directors, address, shareholders or similar, as evidenced in the Paradise Papers, a trove of documents obtained from the Bermuda-based legal firm Appleby which acted as an intermediary in offshore deals.

The Paradise Papers show APG is linked not just to Africa International Capital and its subsidiary Angola International Capital but also to the Angola Business Unit, Africa Real Estate Ltd., Africa IC plc, AIC Services Ltd., Crescat Ventures Ltd. and Phoenix Trust, (all featuring Christopher Darnell) as well as to the ADV Group: ADV Inc., ADV Holding Ltd., ADV Leases Ltd., ADV International Ltd., APG Phulasos Ltd, AGPV Lda., QuestCom International Ltd., Illico and Maximilio (all connected to the Andrade family).

APG itself was a Bermuda-registered company with a single director, named as Christopher John Reinhard listed as resident in Namibia. It was said to be the holding group for 35 investors (including Darnell, Sugrue and the Andrade family) who put money into real estate development projects in Angola. Documentary evidence supplied to Maka Angola shows Miguel Andrade’s involvement via his Bulgarian company, Zahavi. APG has since been liquidated – however it has left an online presence, which gives as its contact, Miguel Kenehele de Andrade in Angola.

AGPV

Darnell’s AIC and the Andrade family’s ADV together owned AGPV Lda.; AGPV was the registered owner of the Pina and Isha residential developments which were subsequently sold on to AGC; AGPV’s subsidiary, Illico, owns or owned (the surface rights to) the land on Ilha do Cabo, Luanda on which the luxury condominiums were built.

AIC

Christopher Mark Darnell, a US citizen and graduate of the University of Chicago, registered Africa International Capital and Angola International Capital in Bermuda in 2014, later as AIC Ltd.  e annual financial reports filed by the AIC group in Bermuda in 2014 (the year it was set up) and 2015 (the last year it traded as AIC before merging with Brenham Oil & Gas to become AGC) show AIC acquired the ADV group on January 23, 2015 for what is described as a “fair value” of US$30,669,000.

They also reveal that as at September 30, 2015 Crescat Ventures Limited was the manager of Africa International Capital Ltd. One excerpt from that report gives a flavour of the self-dealing involved, given that each firm’s single director/shareholder was the same individual:

“There was a management agreement in place between Africa International Capital Ltd and Crescat to provide certain management and strategic advisory services to help ensure Africa International Capital Ltd and its accounts meet their stated investment objectives.
Crescat’s shareholders as at the date of the Statement of Financial Position are Christopher Darnell, Chief Executive Officer of Africa International Capital Ltd and of the Angola Business Unit; and the Phoenix Trust.
As part of its management agreement with Africa International Capital Ltd a fee amounting to USD 500,000 fell due and payable upon the successful listing of the Angola Business Unit on the Bermuda Exchange.
The USD 500,000 fee payable to Crescat was offset, by way of a Netting and Offsetting Agreement between Africa International Capital Ltd on behalf of Angola International Capital and Crescat, against the receivable due from Crescat for a USD 500,000 issue of shares.”
“The company terminated the current management agreement in place between Africa International Capital Ltd and Crescat on 03 November 2015.”

AGC (as referenced above) was the product of the merger between AIC and Brenham Oil & Gas, which conveniently gave Darnell a company with a US base (Brenham was registered in Las Vegas, Nevada). As a US-based company, registering with and reporting to the SEC, it could promise would-be investors in risky African ventures “high international standards (…) confidence and peace of mind”.

According to its website, “Africa Growth Corporation strives to become the leading US listed finance company for Sub-Saharan Africa through

• catalysing the expansion of the mortgage market through the creation of country specific Mortgage Acceptance Corporations (MAC’s) that finance mortgages and acquire mortgage portfolios;
• developing consumer finance programs including the utilization of innovative technological solutions; and
• acquiring, operating and financing real estate assets.”

Its Angolan operation was mainly limited to the last of those and the website still lists the three luxury Angolan properties property acquired from AGPV as real estate assets, a matter in some dispute.

AGC advised the SEC it would relocate its office from the United States to the AIC office in Hamilton, Bermuda (41 Cedar Ave 5th floor, Hamilton HM12), though the telephone contact numbers provided to the SEC were the London offices of the AIC subsidiaries. Prior to the merger, Darnell had already registered AIC subsidiary companies in the UK, producing a shiny prospectus for bond issues in Ireland and the UK to attract investors. Amongst those persuaded to get on board with AGC were Pavlos Papageorgiou, Matthew Miller, Evan Behrens
Gerhard Greif, Garth Lorimer Turner, Tracy Packwood and Dilek Macit. AGC filed an annual report for 2016 to the SEC, showing its new business structure:

“The shareholdings reflect AIC’s direct or indirect economic interest in the respective entity. As at the date hereof, no amount was outstanding in respect of the issued shares for each of the below listed subsidiaries and none of these subsidiaries holds its own shares.”

CRESCAT: Crescat Ventures Ltd was a company set up by Darnell in Bermuda as a vehicle to “manage” (for a fee paid to himself) his other company AIC. Upon the merger to form AGC, and as reported in its filing to the SEC for 2016, AGC (“the Company”) issued stock to Crescat Ventures Ltd. “as part issuance in connection with the Merger.”

The same report to the SEC detailed the asset acquisition for AGC:
“As a result, the post-merger plans of the Company include the acquisition of property interests of three properties (comprising a total of 64 apartments and commercial space) and a further property interest nearing construction completion (comprising 40 additional apartments). The following properties are located in Luanda, the capital and largest city in Angola:
Isha 1 and 2 (Ilha do Cabo, Luanda): ownership and control of a three-story residential apartment building with 24 apartments and of a four-story residential apartment building with 24 apartments; and
Pina (Ilha do Cabo, Luanda): ownership and control of the lease of a modern complex with 16 residential apartments and approximately 134 square meters of commercial space.”

It also spelled out at length and in great detail the associated risks of doing business in Angola, in effect giving a written Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) warning to any potential investors that they could face total loss.

This is a separate entity to the similarly-named Crescat Excolatur S.A., the company set up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines by Miguel Andrade.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

General António Francisco de Andrade, the paterfamilias: a retired General (Reserve) linked to the ruling MPLA party who served for more than 20 years as the Director of the Institute for the Social and Professional Reintegration of Angolan Military Veterans (Instituto de Reintegração Sócio-Profissional dos ex-Militares de Angola, IRSEM). As a serving officer in the military, Angolan law prevented him (in theory) from engaging in business deals. However, in common with many (if not all) of his high-ranking colleagues, he circumvented this by having family members become the nominal owners, shareholders, directors or administrators of companies set up both inside Angola and overseas. Anyone of rank in the Angolan political or military hierarchy was encouraged to enrich themselves this way – their complicity in the corrupt nexus that ruled Angola ensured their loyalty to the President. It was only upon his transfer into the reserve that the General moved to centre stage, replacing his son and daughter as the real head of the Andrade business group. Sources allege he obtained the land on Ilha do Cabo, Luanda from the Fisheries Ministry by persuading the Minister Vitória de Barros Neto (deputy minister at the time) to sell it to him for US $400,000, a sum he raised from his “foreign investor partners”, AIC, as documents show.

Miguel Kenehele de Sousa Andrade: General António’s son, a former army Captain who became the primary ‘straw man’ for his father’s business interests, acting as Director of numerous companies linked to his family. His business interests include Bulgarian-registered Zahavi and Sons via which he owned 7% of the stock in the Angola Property Group.

Natasha Sulaia de Andrade Santos: General António’s daughter, a lawyer who worked for the public prosecutor’s office. She is currently suspended and facing disciplinary action for her role in creating false reports to the police to request the arrest of Sugrue, amongst other irregularities.

Fumwathu Gahuma Guilherme: General António’s personal lawyer, alleged to be complicit in the fraudulent acts that resulted in General Andrade being named General Manager of Illico in October 2016 behind the US partners’ backs. In September 2017, he is alleged to have helped the General get fraudulent notarization of the transfer of title to the land in his daughter’s name for the nominal sum of US $2,700.

Christopher Mark Darnell: US citizen born in Sept 1970 and alumnus of the University of Chicago, variously listed as resident in Bermuda and in the UK where in 2014 he registered three companies with himself as Director: UK – Africa Real Estate Ltd (resigned Sept 2016); Africa International Capital (UK) Ltd (dissolved) and Growth Ignition Limited (still active).

That same year in Bermuda he registered Africa International Capital, Angola International Capital, Angola Business Unit and Crescat. After the merger between AIC and Brenham which formed AGC, the annual report filed to the SEC revealed that QuesCom had acquired AGPV LDA on August 11th, 2015 and that Africa International Capital – Angola International Capital and its subsidiaries held 100% of the share capital of AGPV Lda.

Christopher Sugrue: a US citizen and alumnus of the University of Chicago; a former hedge fund specialist and Executive VP of Refco who founded and chaired the Chicago-based PlusFunds Group Inc. which launched 22 SPhinX funds, registered as companies in the Cayman Islands. When Refco went under after revelations of a $2.4 billion fraud that resulted in a prison sentence for CEO Phillip Bennet, Sugrue was caught up in the mess. His company PlusFunds went under, applying for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2007. The SPhinX funds/companies were finally wound up in January 2018. Sugrue was listed as owning 5% of APG and acted on AGC’s behalf to recover documents when the partnership went sour.

Brenton Kuss: an Australian-born accountant, listed as resident in the UK and a Director of Darnell’s UK companies, Africa Real Estate Ltd, from 2015-2016 (when the company was dissoved) and AIC Services Ltd. for which he is still listed as an active director in the Companies House register. He was CFO for APG until taking over as interim CEO after Darnell’s resignation.

Ildefonso Machado Francisco Massanga: A lawyer acting as the AGC Manager in the Angola office, pushed aside when General Andrade made his move.

Angola’s national bank seems to have been looking the other way when the President’s son and his friend used a bank and several ‘shell’ companies to steal US $100 million, one of many schemes they put in place to loot Angola’s Sovereign Fund.

As everyone now knows, then-President José Eduardo dos Santos put his son, José Filomeno dos Santos (Zenú) in charge of Angola’s Sovereign Fund. In turn, Zenú put his close friend and business associate, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, in charge of managing the Sovereign Fund monies.

The two already face charges of theft and money-laundering in connection with an attempted $250 million dollar embezzlement from the Sovereign Fund. One by one, more instances of their criminal conspiracy to defraud the Angolan public purse continue to emerge.

Three years ago, Maka Angola learned that the equivalent of USD $100 million had been transferred out of Angola’s Sovereign Fund on January 22nd, 2015 and credited to the domestic account of a ‘shell’ company named Kijinga, S.A., at the Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI). Kijinga had no previous business activity and its office address was the same as the bank.

These facts were reported by Maka Angola within three months of the transfer (April 15, 2015) and at the time the BKI used its friends in the Angolan state media to trumpet its case as a legal and honourable institution. Now Maka Angola has received additional evidence that shows exactly how they arranged that US $100 million transfer to Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais. So much for legal and honourable.

Astonishingly, Bastos de Morais remains free to walk the streets and spend the millions he pocketed for “managing” the US $5 billion-dollar Sovereign Fund when ever more clearly, his management of the Fund served mainly to enrich himself.

The facts

Documents have reached Maka Angola showing that after the Sovereign Fund transfer was credited into the Kijinga account at BKI, on February 3, 2015 the company transferred $88 million into a second ‘shell’ company named Ulussu S.A. and the balance of $12 million into yet another ‘shell’ company, named Kabasa S.A.

These three companies, Kijinga, Ulussu e Kabasa, were set up and registered at the same time on December 4, 2012 and with the same address, Avenida Comandante Gika, nº 150, which is also the address of the BKI.

The registration of Kijinga and Ulussu was published in the official gazette, the Diário da República, on December 28, 2012 (III Série, nº 248) while the registration of Kabasa was held back for the next edition, nº 249, published on December 31.

The Public Notary for the Registration of Companies (Guichet Único) (First Office) at the time, Maria Isabel Fernandes Tormenta dos Santos, made sure that any business linked to the most powerful people in Angola (the Presidential family and their allies) was despatched with alacrity – even those now unveiled as frauds perpetuated by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais and his accomplice Zenú. For her pains, she was amply rewarded first as Secretary of State for Justice. Today Maria Isabel dos Santos is the Deputy Inspector General for the State Administration.

Needless to say, the financial manoeuvres did not end there. Before close of business on the same day, the entire US $88 million transferred into the account of Ulussu, S.A. was transferred again, this time into a fourth company named Afrique Imo Corporation. Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais owns 90% of the stock of Afrique Imo Corporation.

Each of these internal transfers between BKI accounts was personally and exclusively authorized and signed off by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, according to information supplied by Swiss investigators. Bastos de Morais has dual Swiss and Angolan nationality and not only has a stable of businesses based in Switzerland, but also, apparently, the servers for the BKI operation and all the information relating to its business transactions – a treasure trove of information about his dodgy dealings.

Transparency vs propaganda

Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais used the state-run newspaper, Jornal de Angola (JA), in its edition of April 17th, 2015 to attack Maka Angola’s publisher, Rafael Marques de Morais. At the time the JA (known locally as Angola’s ‘Pravda’) was edited and published by a lifelong defender of José Eduardo dos Santos, José Ribeiro. That day’s paper had the banner headline ‘The Transparent Kwanza Bank’ (‘Banco Kwanza Transparente’).

In an attempt to use the state media to whitewash his image, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais issued another statement the following day, saying “the initial shareholders of Kijinga had transferred their shares to the BKI in 2012 and in turn the BKI had sold this stock to the Sovereign Fund”. 

State-runned newspaper Jornal de Angola published this article arguing that BKI’s activity was totally transparent.He also stated: “Kijinga is not a service company but is focussed on supporting Angolan entrepreneurs with micro-business start-ups”. Don’t bother trying to figure out what he meant by that – the phrase is deliberately meaningless

This fraudster, who faces trial on even more serious charges, did not specify at the time that Kijinga had been set up with BKI officials as straw men and that he had also set up a further two phantom companies based at his own bank. Kijinga’s sole purpose appears to have been to obscure the origin of the Sovereign Fund’s US $100 million dollars and act as a vehicle to transfer the funds to the other Bastos de Morais companies. All the evidence suggests that the money went nowhere except into Bastos de Morais’s own pocket.

Let’s examine his assertion that Kijinga was sold to the Sovereign Fund. Firstly, why would the Sovereign Fund be so keen to acquire a business that existed only on paper? According to the information supplied by Kijinga S.A. itself to the Angolan tax authorities (Administração Geral Tributária), the company occupied the same address as the BKI, at Nº 150 da Avenida Comandante Gika. Did this not arouse any suspicion? Secondly, the Sovereign Fund did not have an investment policy until the end of 2013 and had made no investments at all that year, according to the annual statement by its managers.

It was all too easy for Bastos de Morais to say whatever he wanted, regardless of its relationship to the truth. Take his statement to JA about BKI’s management of another fund. He said: “Currently, Banco Kwanza Invest has been named as the sole administrator of the USD $250 million Angolan Venture Capital Fund (Fundo Activo de Capital de Risco Angolano, FACRA), one of the largest venture capital funds in Sub-Saharan Africa to date.”

“FACRA is a Venture Capital Fund which supports Angolan entrepreneurs with micro, small and medium-sized businesses (the so-called MPMEs) to construct and expand their businesses in Angola, focussing on those enterprises capable of strong growth and business opportunities that can substitute imports. It also seeks to diversify the Angolan economy, with support to businesses outside the oil and gas sectors, and to create employment opportunities for qualified Angolans.”

There is no evidence that FACRA did any of this. To this day, FACRA has not submitted a single annual report or balance sheet. Many suspect that the former President set it up simply as another vehicle to benefit associates who could invent business schemes to benefit from State funds.

None of the small and medium business owners in Angola have dared utter so much as a peep of protest over the use of their sector and images on PR brochures published by those who were actually taking the money for their own use.

When he felt cornered by the denunciations of his activities by Maka Angola, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais hired an English law firm, Schillings, which had built a reputation for itself as a pricey defender of the reputations of those rich enough to afford their services. Schillings was notorious for their use of the so-called ‘super-injunction’ to prevent reporting on the bad behaviour of their clients. Schillings duly sent out letters threatening court action against Rafael Marques de Morais and numerous publications, including AllAfrica. Some of those publications felt obliged to remove any mention of Bastos de Morais from their websites.

For his part, Marques de Morais responded by telling Schillings to sue and be damned as he would welcome the opportunity to take the matter to trial. Maka Angola had acquired a wealth of documentary evidence that he could exhibit at trial to prove his reports were based on fact and that publication of them was in the public interest. The evidence was made available to investigators in the UK, Switzerland and Angola and once made public, they would ruin Bastos de Morais’s reputation beyond repair once and for all.

And what is Schillings’ reaction now that charges have been laid and Bastos de Morais is to stand trial? Silence. There is no possibility of their bringing any suit for defamation against Angola’s President, government and judicial systems, all of whom now echo the accusations made by Maka Angola against their client.

The complicit silence of Angola’s Central Bank

One voice strangely absent from Angola’s official statements on Bastos de Morais and the fight against corruption was any input from Angola’s Central Bank (Banco Nacional de Angola, the BNA) about Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI).

An international banking specialist consulted by Maka Angola said it was not possible that the BKI could have “sold” Kijinga, S.A. to the Sovereign Fund without BNA approval. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the specialist said “Any stock transaction, even if it is between existing shareholders, would have to be approved by the regulatory authority, in this case the BNA.”

“Even worse, this operation is typical of a money-laundering scheme – a criminal operation conducted by a bank which is supposed to be supervised in terms of compliance by the BNA which is the regulatory authority for all banking activity in Angola. At the end of the day, the BNA also bears some responsibility for this criminal operation because of its failure to enforce compliance and transparency – in effect allowing the criminals to get away with it.”

“The BNA is quick to act when it comes to some private banks and then so lax when it comes to banks that are supposed to be managing funds from the public purse. Surely, this is where BNA supervision should be at its most rigorous.”

Money-laundering and abuse of trust

The facts as laid out give rise to two legal questions. The first relates to the behaviour of Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, the second to the supervisory function of the Banco Nacional de Angola.

The jurist Rui Verde believes there is sufficient evidence from the supporting documents for the Attorney-General’s office to open another criminal investigation: “in the case of Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, the actions so described give rise to potential charges both of abuse of trust and money-laundering.”

As for the BNA, and given that accusations of malfeasance by the BKI had already been made public, “the lack of action, at the very least, constitutes gross negligence with regard to its supervisory duty.”

It’s worth noting that this is not the first banking scandal to tarnish the reputation of the BNA. Some say it calls into question the administration of the current governor, José de Lima Massano. Is it showing unacceptable weakness in the world of international finance?

Unless the BNA has somehow been relieved of its regulatory duties, shouldn’t it be investigating the BKI? Why is Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, who has been named as a defendant in a criminal case and faces several charges, being allowed to continue to run the bank with impunity? Why is he free at all?

Isabel dos Santos is the woman who once boasted to Forbes magazine that she was Africa’s first female billionaire.

Although Angolans knew she owed her fortune to nepotism and wholesale theft from the public purse, Isabel wove an image of herself as an astute global entrepreneur. But her reputation began to unravel along with her business empire after her father José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down as President of Angola last year.

As President, Dos Santos had funnelled millions of dollars from the state oil company Sonangol to ‘loans’ to bankroll her businesses. Then, before leaving office, he installed Isabel as the head of Sonangol. The effect was catastrophic.

The new President marshalled the evidence and ensured his own position was sufficiently secure before acting.

First, Isabel was sacked as the head of Sonangol. Then she was removed, step by step, from each of the lucrative contracts or positions awarded by her father https://www.makaangola.org/2018/07/isabel-dos-santos-the-fall-of-africas-richest-woman/ . Goodbye, Caculo-Cabaça hydroelectric dam. Goodbye, Luanda Metropolitan Master Plan. Goodbye, Corimba Coast Road. Goodbye to Atlantic Ventures’ Port project. Goodbye, monopoly diamond-trading licences for Ascorp, Odisseye and Iaxhon.

Soon it’ll be Goodbye to the jewel in her crown, UNITEL and perhaps her freedom too. Between them, Sonangol and the Brazilian company Oi (which has taken over PT Ventures (PTV) and is suing Isabel for $600 million USD of unpaid dividends) want out of UNITEL.

Meanwhile nerves in Portugal are also fraying. The collapse of Isabel’s empire will have repercussions for major Portuguese businesses such as GALP and EFACEC.

Isabel has grumbled plaintively to friends and business associates that she is being ‘persecuted’ but her public threat to sue the government of Angola has backfired spectacularly, turning some of her father’s ertswhile allies against her and strengthening President Lourenço’s hand. Senior MPLA Political Bureau figures say she’s blown it and her father has lost any power he had to pull strings from the wings.

As reported by the state media http://jornaldeangola.sapo.ao/politica/isabel_dos_santos__ignora_notificacao , on July 17 Isabel was served with a summons to present herself for questioning in connection with the investigation into the (mal)administration of the National Oil Company Sonangol. The summons required her to appear the next day at the Attorney General’s office in Luanda.

Instead, sources report that Isabel and her husband retired to her father’s home for the rest of the day before dashing to the airport for a late-night flight to Europe.
Is she on the run?

After more than four decades of official silence, Angola’s dirty secrets are being swept from under the carpet. Officially-sanctioned news reports denouncing specific cases of corruption in high places have mushroomed in a matter of months. People once thought to be untouchable are under investigation or already face criminal charges.

José Filomeno dos Santos (Zenú), and his business associate Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais have been charged with misappropriating $500 million US dollars from the $5 billion US dollar Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund. The fate of the rest of the fund has yet to be determined.

Zenú’s elder sister, Isabel dos Santos, is alleged to have built a billion-dollar business empire based on nepotism and ‘loans’ of public money that have never been repaid. The evidence now emerging confirms the endemic corruption that Maka Angola has been reporting for years.

There is, of course, a common denominator in the scandals involving Zenú, Isabel and so many others: their father, José Eduardo dos Santos, who stepped down as President of Angola last year. Who else could have facilitated, organized, permitted or authorized such widespread political corruption but the ‘capo di tutti capi’?

Yet whenever the former President’s name is mentioned in connection with these crimes against the state, Angolans shrug and say that nothing can be done because he secured immunity from prosecution for at least five years. Not so.

IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION

Angola’s Constitution specifically excludes corruption and other serious crimes from the blanket immunity granted to the President. Article 127 on Criminal Liability states:
“1. The President of the Republic shall not be liable for actions practiced in the exercise of his functions, except in the event of corruption, treason and the crimes defined in this Constitution as imprescriptible and ineligible for amnesty.
2. Conviction shall lead to removal from office and disqualification from standing for another term of office.
3. For crimes not committed during the exercise of his office, the President of the Republic shall answer before the Supreme Court five years after his term of office has ended.”

Clauses 1 and 3 of Article 127 clearly distinguish between crimes committed in the exercise of presidential duties and crimes committed that were not a function of his official duties. Consequently there are distinct procedures (and treatment of immunity) for these differing circumstances.

THE FIVE YEAR RULE

Firstly, let’s examine Clause 3 and the five-year delay, a rule which only applies to crimes committed by the President outside the scope of his official duties.

Let’s take a hypothetical example: one fine Sunday morning the serving President decides to make use of his free time to drive his private vehicle to the ocean where he intends to swim. Along the way, while driving with excessive speed, he collides with a pedestrian who is killed. His actions might give rise to charges of homicide, criminal negligence or dangerous driving – all of which have nothing to do with the driver’s occupation. If a crime has been committed, it was not in the exercise of his presidential office.

In this instance, Article 127 (3) applies. That is, the President of the Republic can only be tried for these offences five years after his term has ended, and by the Supreme Court. The five-year moratorium only applies in this type of situation.

PRESIDENTIAL CRIMES

So what happens if the president commits a crime while discharging his official duties? That depends on the crime. He has immunity from prosecution for all lesser crimes. Only serious crimes, as identified in Article 127 (1) of the Constitution – such as corruption, treason and others – are excluded.
Legal definitions of political corruption usually take four forms:
1) Bribery and Payoffs – the act of giving (or soliciting) money, goods or services in
exchange for favourable treatment.

2) Embezzlement – when an official diverts funds belonging to others for their own personal benefit, e.g. the unscrupulous and illegal use of a politician’s authority for personal gain, when funds intended for public projects are intentionally misdirected in order to maximize the benefits to illegally private interests of the corrupted individual(s) and their cronies.
3) Blackmail and Extortion – When an official uses their power and influence to
threaten or coerce another person into behaving a certain way or threatens to
reveal embarrassing or incriminating information about someone in order to
coerce that person into cooperating with them.

4) Preferential Treatment – When an official lets appointments be influenced by
inappropriate or illegal factors. One type of preferential treatment is
nepotism: the practice of giving appointments to family members, rather
than basing appointments on the actual qualifications of the appointees. Another
type of preferential treatment, known as patronage, occurs when an official
makes appointments in exchange for votes, payoffs or other benefits.

The crimes of which Dos Santos’s children stand accused, and in which the former President may be implicated by the evidence, can be framed within Article 127 (1). That is, they fall within the definitions of political corruption, one of the serious crimes for which immunity is excluded, thus permitting the initiation of criminal investigation and prosecution.

IN OR OUT OF OFFICE

Instituting criminal proceedings against a serving President is complex. Article 129 of the Constitution stipulates the procedures to be followed by the National Assembly and the Supreme Court that could ultimately lead to the President’s impeachment and dismissal.

However, Dos Santos is no longer the serving President of Angola and hence serious crimes committed in the exercise of his official duties are no longer subject to Article 129 of the Constitution. He cannot be impeached nor dismissed from the Presidency, nor is any amnesty or prescription applied.

As a former President, his actions while in office are governed by Articles 133, 135 and 150 of the Angolan Constitution. Article 133 (1) concerning former presidents of the Republic, gives way to Article 135 (3), regarding the members of the Council of the Republic, which in turn sends us to Article 150, which refers to immunity for members of the Angolan national assembly or parliament. The effect is to apply the immunity rules protecting members of parliament to former Presidents.

Article 150 (3) stipulates how that immunity can be rescinded:
“3. Once criminal proceedings have been instigated against a Member and they have been accused by indictment or equivalent, unless caught in flagrante delicto committing a felony, a plenary sitting of the National Assembly must rule on the suspension of the Member and the removal of immunity in order to allow the case to proceed.”

This means that if the judicial authorities believe there is sufficient material evidence to warrant an investigation, they may open a case, undertake an investigation and indict any MP, even a former President, on criminal charges. Only at this stage is the National Assembly required to rule on the suspension of immunity and referral to the Supreme Court, thus permitting the case to go to trial.

It cannot be emphasized enough: Angolan law, as it currently stands, places no obstacle in the way of the judicial authorities to investigate or prosecute a former President for serious crimes. Hence, if there is material evidence of serious criminal behaviour by José Eduardo dos Santos when he served as President, then there is no impediment to the judicial authorities ordering a full investigation. That is, in fact, their duty. If the investigation results in sufficient evidence to lay charges, then the evidence and indictments must be presented to the National Assembly to rule on whether (or not) to rescind immunity and remit the case to the Supreme Court.

CONCLUSION

In short, the judicial authorities are free to conduct investigations into the actions of former Presidents in the exercise of their official duties, and to draw conclusions about whether such actions could be construed as serious crimes under the constitution. If they so conclude, then they must issue an indictment and present it to the National Assembly to decide whether or not to to take the former President to trial.

The five-year rule does not apply to actions performed in the exercise of presidential duties, only to private actions.

If Angola is serious about tackling corruption and recovering the stolen billions, then it is right and proper that the actions of the former President be investigated. Should that result in an indictment, it will be a matter for the National Assembly to decide whether to rescind immunity and take him to trial. That would be a political decision and they would, no doubt, weigh their judgement in the interests of peace and national reconciliation, as is their sovereign right. Whatever the outcome, at least the nation would learn the truth.

Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais – an indicted swindler connected to the former kleptocratic regime in Angola, accused of the brazen theft of untold millions of dollars of public money – has obtained a temporary victory in his legal battles.

An attempt by lawyers representing the Angolan government to prevent Bastos de Morais from continuing to access the US $5 billion dollar Angolan Sovereign Fund, was not upheld by the courts in London, UK due to their failure to produce the required documentation in time.

The effect is to allow Bastos de Morais, who is already facing charges for embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Sovereign Wealth Fund, to regain access to hundreds more.

Blame for this procedural mishap is reputedly down to ineptitude by Angola’s new government, possibly related to the ruling party’s desire to protect the former President. The word in London is that Luanda is wholly responsible for the delay in supplying the additional documentary evidence required to freeze, and thereby safeguard, the US $5 billion dollar funds improperly diverted to Bastos’s Quantum Global group of companies.

The former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, had installed his son, José Filomeno dos Santos, known as ‘Zenú’, as the Chairman of the Sovereign Wealth Fund and ‘Zenú’ ensured the $5 billion dollar fund was handed to his lifelong friend and business associate Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais. When evidence emerged of alleged fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering (along with deliberate mismanagement and obscenely-inflated fees and commissions) President Lourenço yanked Zenú from the Fund and began the necessary legal proceedings in Angola, England and Switzerland to recover the misappropriated billions.

Sources at the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund (Fundo Soberano de Angola – FSDEA) have supplied sworn testimony that Bastos de Morais, the owner and head of the Quantum Global Group, was the front man for systematic embezzlement from the Fund, thanks to “full protection” from former President Dos Santos. The FSDEA sources say that Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais was paid US $750 million in fees for ‘managing’ the Fund, US $250 million more than publicly disclosed hitherto.

There is a wealth of evidence like this in the public domain (albeit not all of it is yet before the courts in various jurisdictions) that document Bastos de Morais’s links to the kleptocratic family who ruled Angola until last year. Official documents, including presidential decrees signed by the former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, along with testimony from Angolan officials, attest to the attempted embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Angolan Sovereign Fund, prevented only thanks to British and European financial safeguards against money laundering.

ENGLISH RULES

It was thanks to a tip-off from the British financial authorities that Angola was first able to request a global freeze order on the disputed monies.

In the interim, Angola laid multiple charges against both Bastos de Morais and Zenú, who under a travel ban but otherwise free pending trial. The two men are indicted on counts of fraud, malfeasance and criminal association in connection with the looting of the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

However, the Angolans failed to produce the required documentary evidence required by the High Court in London, to ensure the continuation of this global freeze order on all the sums connected with the Angolan Sovereign Fund.

In his ruling on July 30, 2018, Justice Popplewell explains that he is unable to extend the global freeze order because the claimants failed to supply “full disclosure” of all the facts, as required.

“Given the size of the freezing order sought and the allegations of dishonesty being made, it was incumbent on the claimants and their legal advisers to make the fullest enquiry into the central elements of their case if they were to proceed without notice,” Justice Popplewell said.

He said the Angolan authorities were “culpable” and hid critical information in the original application for the freezing order that amounted to “breaches of the duty of disclosure”. “Proper disclosure would have put a very different complexion on the application.”

What would the Angolans be hiding? And why? Given that President Lourenço is attempting to recover many billions of dollars that properly belong to the Angolan Treasury as well to extricate Angola from the illegal and corrupt contracts signed or authorized by his predecessor, José Eduardo dos Santos.

According to government insiders, the reason was that, less than a year after securing a peaceful succession that removed Dos Santos from office, the Angolan side was fearful of allowing evidence to be presented in London that would incriminate the former President.

Such a move would make it politically impossible for his successor to avoid triggering the process in Luanda to hold former President Dos Santos to account, a move that could destabilize the new régime.

Observers suggest the Lourenço Administration is not yet sufficiently well-established to risk the political upheaval that might ensue, given that Dos Santos created a nexus of corruption that involved every major political and military official to ensure their complicity and loyalty to him over four decades.

The outcome in London, however, suggests that any attempt to conceal evidence that links directly to Dos Santos will prevent Angola from the looted billions – in effect giving Bastos de Morais carte blanche to regain control of the disputed money, which had already earned him fees far in excess of industry standards for investment fund management, even if he has actually invested the monies.

Maka Angola has obtained evidence that Bastos de Morais was paid at least US$ 750 million dollars in fees for his supposed ‘management’ of the Sovereign Fund – at least US$ 250 million more than ever revealed hitherto. His ‘management’ left much of the money languishing in Quantum Global accounts, rather than earning interest elsewhere.