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Swindling Angola’s Central Bank

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Although to date Angola’s efforts have focused on severing ties to Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais’ management of the Sovereign Wealth Fund, his involvement in what is alleged to have been the systematic theft of money from the Angolan public purse goes further than the mismanagement of the Sovereign Fund.

Up to now the government has remained totally silent about a further US $3 billion dollars that Bastos secured from Angola’s Central Bank (Banco Nacional de Angola – BNA). As with the Sovereign Fund monies, the BNA funds also found their way to the Northern Trust Bank in England, reportedly used as the hub for diverting funds obtained from Angola into Bastos’ Swiss-based Quantum Global Group.

Maka Angola expanded its investigations after a whistleblower from the BNA entered into contact subject to guarantees of anonymity. The BNA official asserted that “these funds [the BNA’s US$3 billion] have been managed without accountability.”

The source described how Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais signed a contract with the BNA for his companies Quantum Global Investment Management (QGIM), and Quantum Global Opportunities Fund (QGOF) to manage two investments, one for a US $1 billion dollar fund and another for €900 million euros.

These investment mandates were awarded to Bastos de Morais’ companies in 2011 by the then governor of the BNA, José de Lima Massano.

The documents seen by Maka Angola show that QGIM was supposed to assign the US $1 billion to a balanced portfolio, for which QGIM would not only charge a 1% management fee but would also collect a staggering 20% of any profit.

What did Quantum Global consider a “balanced portfolio”?

Right from the start, in 2011, QGIM, whose loan manager was Bastos de Morais’ brother Serge Bastos, “invested” US $25 million in the form of a loan to a newly-registered shell company called Novécia S.A, for gold exploration in Angola.

Novécia was, in fact, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais’ own company registered at the offices of Banco Kwanza Invest (BKI), at Avenida Comandante Gika, nº 150, Luanda. Bastos de Morais holds 85% of the shares in BKI, which was initially created with his friend Zenú.

Novécia’s gold prospecting and exploration project (in the M’popo mines in Southern Huíla province) was entrusted to a public-private consortium in which Bastos de Morais and Zenú’s company Calfisa S.A, held 20% of the shares.

Other shareholders in the project also included (embarrassingly) the current Angolan President João Lourenço, his cousin and the current governor of Cabinda, General Eugénio César Laborinho, and a former Angolan Army Chief of the General Staff, General António dos Santos França ‘Ndalu’, an MPLA politburo member known as the Generals’ General, among other regime stalwarts.

So far it has not proven possible to verify if any of the other shareholders, with the exception of Zenú, were aware of this “loan”. Nor has it been possible to verify if any of the money was ever assigned to the M’popo project.

What Maka Angola was able to verify is that the loan has never been repaid and that is “expected to be written off”. Nonetheless, Quantum Global Group CFO, Tobias Klein, kept the value of the loan, with accrued interest, at US $50 million in the books “to hide the loss from BNA”. “This is fraud”, says a central bank insider.

Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais

Also in 2011, a US $26.5 million loan was made to a Refund Emerging Markets for a real estate investment in Angola. As QGIM itself has admitted, the Quantum Global Opportunities Fund (QGOF) administrator, Gareth Fielding, stole the money and produced fraudulent statements to obscure it.

QGIM then “invested” US $45 million dollars between 2012 and 2013 to a York Investment Fund for oil drilling in California. It reported a loss of US $27 million in the venture, which was revalued in the books as a loss of US $19 million. Any attempt to recover the losses through a liquidator was deemed unviable by experts.

Another mind-boggling “investment” was made in 2012, when QG lent US $5 million dollars to its manager Thomas Ladner to buy a stake in another Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais company, The Partnership Group (TPG). An additional loan of US $4.4 million dollars was made to TPG. No repayment of these loans has been recorded, despite extended maturity.

In 2013, Gareth Fielding (manager of QGOF) and Roberto Garobbio (manager of Quantum Global Private Wealth – QGPW) made loans of €18.1 million Euros, from BNA’s second investment mandate, to a company named Winnecore for the purchase of real estate. It was simply reported that the borrowers were “not able to pay back the loan”. Their report concluded that they sought to obscure the loss by false accounting but could not find “any bank willing to do it”.

In May 2015, the QG Opportunities Fund (QGOF) assigned another loan for around US $10 million dollars to Thomas Ladner, through his company FTS Capital Limited, “to invest in highly speculative pre-IPO companies”. Ladner was the chairman of the QGIM board that both approved the loan and subsequent delays for repayment. As of December 2017 these loans from BNA funds to Thomas Ladner loans amounted to US $15.5 million dollars but were recorded as being of “virtually no value” in the books.

The BNA has taken steps to withdraw its assets from QGIM management but questions linger about why its governor José de Lima Massano placed US $250 million into the care of Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais.

A source at the BNA told Maka Angola “I suspect that people within BNA are afraid of showing what QG did. If the BNA withdraws the remaining assets, and starts an investigation, a lot of dirt will come up.”

Maka Angola has also discovered that Quantum Global Group continues to charge management fees for the US $90 million non-liquid asset (out of the US $250 million investment).

In the opinion of a reputable international investment manager consulted by Maka Angola, “Essentially, it means Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais invested in “things where the money can’t be readily gotten back, unless someone else buys whatever he ‘invested’ in. Assume this money is lost. These non-liquid assets are private things which (most likely) no one else has any interest in owing

An inside job

These disastrous financial decisions were made during José de Lima Massano’s first tenure as BNA Governor (2010-2015). Massano had been CEO of Angolan Investment Bank (Banco Angolano de Investimentos – BAI) and on moving to the BNA he took with him from BAI David Mauro Figueiredo de Carvalho, whom he appointed as Director of the Reserve Management Department. Among his responsibilities was to negotiate and oversee the BNA investment portfolio with Quantum Global.

When former President Dos Santos fired Massano in 2015, David de Carvalho also left BNA, resurfacing one year later as the Quantum Global Group’s regional director for Angola and Mozambique.

Consider the possibility: was this scheme another “inside job” by the Dos Santos cohort to find ways to siphon money from the Angolan public purse to themselves. With the right people in place to select their favoured vehicle for “managing the investment” of Angolan money, they could then undervalue the assets so that the difference between the original investment and current value could be pocketed without anyone noticing.

Maka Angola is following up with this investigation as with many other leads into alleged grand larceny by the Dos Santos family and Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais.

Clearly these investigations are an irritant to Bastos de Morais who has good reason not to want his QG Group’s dealings made public. To this end he has employed the notorious UK law firm (and reputation management firm) Schillings, to threaten Maka Angola and any other media platform which may have republished our reports on Bastos de Morais’ criminal activities.

So once again, Maka Angola renews its challenge to Bastos de Morais and Schillings: bring it on. We would welcome the opportunity to submit documentary evidence of wrongdoing both to the English law courts and the media. Truth and overweening public interest are the best, and absolute, defense to any defamation lawsuit.


Legal Jeopardy for the Angolan ‘Princess’

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The woman who once styled herself as Africa’s first female billionaire, controlling a complex empire of companies registered around the world, is discovering that all those overseas registrations make her vulnerable to legal action in multiple jurisdictions.

As reported extensively by Maka Angola over many years, evidence shows the Dos Santos family and associates customarily registered companies overseas (often in tax havens known for lax supervision) using them as vehicles for the sole purpose of transferring large sums of money between multiple companies owned or controlled by the Dos Santos cohort.

International experts say such transactions between shell companies are typical of large-scale embezzlement and money-laundering.

One particular financial manoeuvre involving nearly US $500 million transferred through a Dutch-registered subsidiary has now placed Isabel dos Santos in the position of having to defend herself against a lawsuit in the Netherlands in a case that has also been the subject of arbitration proceedings before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris.

This is by far the most dangerous development for the Angolan in a multifaceted litigious war involving the four corporate shareholders in Angola’s first, and biggest, mobile phone company, Unitel SA.

As a result of Isabel’s having registered Unitel International Holdings BV (UIH) in the Netherlands, an appeal court there has ruled that the Amsterdam district court does have jurisdiction to hear interlinked cases against Isabel’s companies UIH, Vidatel and the BVI-registered Tokeyna Management Limited. And for the first time, Isabel is directly named as a co-defendant in the case, along with Antony (Tony) Dolton, the executive director of Unitel. If the case goes against them, the financial penalties would have major repercussions for Angola and for the erstwhile first family.

 

Nepotism and Corruption

Information in the public domain has already established that Isabel dos Santos’s entire business empire was built on privileged access to Angolan state funds and international business partnerships authorized by her father in his capacity as President.

According to Forbes: “every major Angolan investment held by [Isabel] Dos Santos stems either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business in the country or from a stroke of the president’s pen that cut her into the action.”

This was the case with Unitel, created by a presidential decree that overturned a requirement that such awards be put out to tender. Shares of 25% apiece in the enterprise were awarded to the major investors, Angola’s state oil company Sonangol (through a subsidiary named Mercury or MSTelcom) and Portugal Telecom (through its international subsidiary Portugal Telecom Ventures (PTV)’s stake in Africatel. The remaining two tranches of 25% went to a pair of Angolan companies: Geni SARL whose majority shareholder is a Presidential associate, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento ‘Dino’ and Vidatel, a company wholly owned by Isabel dos Santos (who is also alleged to have an interest in the Geni Group).

The relationship between the four parties was far from smooth. Such was the hostility between the Angolan partners and PTV, that Unitel withheld payment of dividends from 2011, as reported by PT in its 2013 filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Portugal Telecom had bitten off more than it could chew in trying to expand into the African and South American markets and an attempt to acquire the Brazilian telecommunications conglomerate Oi, SA ended in a merger of the two. One consequence of that merger with PTV’s parent company was that PTV became part of the Oi stable. The ownership situation was further complicated by the break-up of PT and the fact that PTV’s Africatel interest remained with Oi, which was highly leveraged and had to file for bankruptcy protection.

This sparked all-out war with the Angolan parties who alleged that PTV had contravened Unitel’s shareholder agreement which, they argued, gave the right of first refusal of any sale to the existing partners.

On the one hand, Oi’s position was somewhat vindicated by an Angolan court, which found in July 2017 that Unitel’s Angolan partners did indeed “disrespect” the rights of the fourth partner (at the time PTV, subsequently taken over by Oi) in denying them the right to inspect company documents and take part in the annual general meeting, which the court found was not properly conducted.

But in March, a similar case brought against PTV in Cape Verde of “violation of shareholder’s rights” (including the right to first refusal) as a result of Oi’s acquisition of Portugal Telecom’s stake in Africatel, went against PTV/Oi. And Samba Luxco, who owns 25% of Africatel (which is also registered in the Netherlands) is also counter-claiming against PTV at the ICC.

Portugal Telecom and Oi both assert that there was no ‘sale’ and therefore no such requirement. They have counter-sued for US $3.4 billion for the dividends which the Angolan parties withheld from both parties over consecutive years; for damages for the denial of rights which saw them excluded from shareholder decisions; and, for the harm done to the company by the withdrawal of US $465 million by Isabel dos Santos, assisted by Antony Dolton of Unitel, channelled via a ‘loan’ to UIH in the Netherlands.

This manoeuvre in which Isabel simultaneously signed the loan agreement both as the representative of the lender, Unitel, and the debtor, UIH, set a 10-year period for repayment at 1% interest. But Isabel then “sold on” the debt to Tokeyna Management Services, the BVI-registered company that she owns outright.

Adding insult to injury, the funds that Isabel dos Santos transferred out of Unitel, via UIH to Tokeyna, were partially recovered by her hours before a BIV court’s freeze order, and were used to take control of direct rivals of Portugal Telecom in Portugal.

Lawyers representing Oi have used every available avenue to seek redress, including a suit in the BVI which resulted in a global freeze order (which Isabel partly evaded by moving US $270 million out of the BVI hours before the order was made) and an arbitration suit heard by the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce whose ruling may be imminent.

In her recent questioning by the ICC arbitration panel, Isabel relied heavily on ignorance, faulty memory and what she said was her lack of competence in finance and accountancy to ‘explain’ why she, as President of the Board of Unitel, authorized payment of US $155 million in “commissions” to her own company Tokeyna in 2013 and US $177.9 million in 2014.

Lawyers for PTV say these ‘service contracts’ with Tokeyna are a fiction with no commercial justification. They say Tokeyna is a company with no employees, apparently incapable of offering any services. Isabel’s justification in her responses to the ICC was that Unitel “needed a company outside Angola for operational reasons”.

Her method of paying this “fee” for “services’ was a convoluted contract selling on the US $465 million debt owed to Unitel by UIH, to Tokeyna and “reimbursing” Tokeyna for that amount. As lawyers for Oi have argued, even if the $155 million fee had been honestly earned by Tokeyna, this manoeuvre illicitly deprived Unitel SA of US $315 million at a stroke.

As reported by Público, Unitel’s auditors Price Waterhouse Cooper expressed their concern over the 2013 accounts, not least because these transactions were between related parties. PwC estimated that the transactions with Tokeyna had reduced Unitel’s value by an estimated $764 million USD and caused a negative impact on the company’s liquidity to the value of $434 million in that financial year.

Unitel tried to divert blame for failure to pay dividends to PTV and Oi by issuing a statement to say that the dividends were available but only in local currency and the reason for their non-delivery to the non-Angolan partner was due to the Angolan currency crisis. The Unitel statement said:

“Due to macroeconomic issues in Angola — namely the lack of currencies –, it has not yet been possible to pay dividends to foreigners, since they must be exchanged into dollars or euros, in order to be properly exported”. “Dividends from PT Ventures have been licensed by BNA, but there are no currencies available in the exchange market“.

Ominously for Isabel dos Santos, arguments that may hold sway in Angola or Cape Verde are unlikely to pass the standards required in the European Union When Oi sued in the Netherlands, where UIH is registered, lawyers for Isabel, Dolton and Tokeyna counter-sued before striving to have all the cases struck out on the grounds that the Netherlands did not have jurisdiction to intervene. On this count, they have lost the argument. The linked cases will now all be heard simultaneously by the same judge at the Amsterdam district court.

The danger to Isabel dos Santos is this: as a member of the European Union, the Netherlands is required to comply with the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AML), and its courts are likely to take a far tougher view of ultimate beneficial ownership by a politically-exposed person.

Angolan Port Authority Seeks End to Sogester Contract

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The Danish multinational giant, Maersk, stands accused of making obscene profits at the expense of Angolan dockworkers amid calls for the contract awarded to its subsidiary, Sogester, to be ripped up.

The Port of Namibe says it is struggling to pay its workers because it is powerless to revoke a 2014 contract which gives 90% of income to the port’s commercial operator, Sogester, a joint partnership between the Maersk group’s APM Terminals and a company which is the commercial arm of Angola’s ruling MPLA party.

According to the Port of Namibe board chairman, António Samuel, “it has been an enormous struggle to safeguard workers’ pay and keep going on the 10%”. The dockworkers’ union agrees – and says it is high time this contract was torn up.

The port authority and union are hoping the government of President João Lourenço (elected in September 2017) will step in to review what they see as the untenable existing contract with Sogester, particularly in light of the known mismanagement of funds by the Angolan partner in the company, Gestão de Fundos, S.A.

 

MAERSK AND MPLA SPAWN SOGESTER

When the former President of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, selected the Danish multi-national A.P. Moller-Maersk group subsidiary APM Terminals to revamp and run the Port of Namibe in 2005, it was required by law to have an Angolan partner. In exchange for its promise of investment and expertise, APM Terminals would own 51% of a joint enterprise named the Sociedade Gestora de Terminais (better known by its Portuguese acronym, Sogester) with the remaining 49% owned by an Angolan company named Gestão de Fundos. As well as the Port of Namibe, Sogester also operates Terminal 2 of the Port of Luanda.

A new contract, signed in 2014, gave Sogester exclusive commercial rights over the Port of Namibe’s containerized and general cargo terminal for a period of 20 years in exchange for unspecified promised investment. It gave Sogester total control of the Multi-use terminal – buildings, machinery, cranes, workers and all, and the right to 90% of invoiced income from them. Source at the port say there is no evidence Sogester has made any new investment since 2014. They say the only investment recorded in the past four years was a donation from the government of Japan.

Did the Danes realize their Angolan partner, Gestão de Fundos, was the commercial arm of the ruling party? Did they shrug off this complete disregard for conflict of interest on the grounds that turning a blind eye to corruption is the cost of doing business in Angola?

Under President dos Santos, the MPLA set up Gestão de Fundos in 1998 to manage the pension fund for the party’s supposedly-benevolent foundation, the Fundação Sagrada Esperança, which is funded directly from the state budget. The fund management company was set up with funds from the state oil monopoly, Sonangol. In short both were publicly-funded.

The Fundação Sagrada Esperança owns 60% of the Gestão de Fundos stock, Sonangol owns 30% and the remaining 10% was shared between MPLA nomenklatura, including the notoriously-corrupt and self-serving Isaac dos Anjos who was appointed President/Chairman of the fund management Board.

 

CASH COW

Sogester’s Angolan partner is a prime example of the corrupt nexus between the Angolan ruling party, politically exposed persons and commercial interests. Over the years Maka Angola revealed how for two decades the MPLA siphoned off at least half a billion dollars of funds from the state budget into this foundation, ostensibly set up to provide pensions for veterans of the independence struggle, holders of public office, former parliamentarians and political party leaders. The foundation channelled the money to the management fund which set up two pension investment vehicles while also entering into commercial partnerships.

Gestão de Fundos reaped huge profits, but Angola’s Tribunal de Contas (the state auditor) reported that Gestão de Fundos had no accounting procedures in place and that its management had diverted funds to private ends. In short, far from ploughing investment and commercial earnings back into the state budget, or pension funds or other good causes, the Tribunal de Contas found the profits were corruptly diverted to enrich individual party members, including the aforementioned Isaac dos Anjos.

It’s been nearly ten years since Maka Angola revealed how this former government minister turned multimillionaire had been found guilty of mis-management while serving as Chairman of Gestão de Fundos and sentenced to pay a (derisory) fine. Neither the foundation nor the management fund had kept proper accounts and it proved impossible for the state auditor to establish just how many millions of dollars of public monies had been embezzled.

In the ensuing years Isaac dos Anjos was rewarded with one public office after another: Ambassador to South Africa, Governor of the province of Huila, Governor of the province of Benguela,. Last year he was appointed as President João Lourenço’s economic adviser (for the productive sector). It’s alleged that these continued honours signify that Isaac dos Anjos may indeed have enriched himself but he first ensured that even larger sums went into the accounts of the Party and its leading members.

How else to explain that he remains in favour when during his tenure as Governor of Benguela in 2013-14, more than US $83 million went missing? Again the Tribunal de Contas found him guilty, remarking inter alia on his unreceipted personal expenses of more than US $6 million and the corrupt distribution of 76 imported luxury cars.

Sources amongst the party faithful say that for the MPLA, Sogester was a cash cow by means of which Gestão de Fundos could fill the party coffers. For as long as Isaac dos Anjos ensured that millions of dollars continued to flow in the right direction, the MPLA and its leaders could afford to turn a blind eye to any personal enrichment. And apparently this they did.

WIN-WIN FOR SOGESTER, LOSE-LOSE FOR ANGOLA

Under the current contract, Sogester receives 90% of the income from the Port of Namibe operation. For Angolan dockworkers whose labour makes these profits possible, the injustice of seeing persons of political interest corruptly enrich themselves and their party through this public-private company, while the workers barely make a living wage, is getting harder and harder to stomach.

One of the most shameful aspects of the Sogester contract is that once again the Angolan state bears the cost of any losses, while the private companies are guaranteed to lose nothing. Should Sogester go into the red at any time during the 20-year contract, the state steps in to ensure at least it breaks even. And as legal expert Rui Verde notes, “the wording of these contracts is so open to interpretation that the company has unlimited grounds permitting it to seek compensation from the state.”

The contract with Sogester requires it to pay the Port of Namibe a mere 10% of the invoiced income it earns. In 2017 alone, Sogester invoiced 2.133 billion kwanzas of which it keeps 90% compared to the international norm for an internal rate of return of around 10%. This isn’t just a win-win for Sogester but legalized pillage.

 

ANGOLA’S DIFFICULT TRANSITION TO GOOD GOVERNANCE

Calls for the Angolan President and government to offer redress may be futile. The fact is that the government is still in transition from the kleptocratic regime fomented by former President José Eduardo dos Santos, during which politically-exposed persons were encouraged to profit from business interests.

While the new President has vowed to crack down on corruption and demands repatriation of the billions of oil dollars diverted abroad, many of the high-ranking military and political figures who remain active at the highest levels of the ruling MPLA party are closely linked to the corrupt nexus of the past. Is it really feasible for the Angolan President to confront the massed ranks of leading members of the party he has served for decades and which brought him to power?

And what of Maersk’s complicity? As The Economist recently reported “The era when European firms could talk up lengthy “ethics codes” at home and behave badly abroad is over.” As companies like Lafarge and Novartis have found to their cost, recent EU anti-corruption and anti-money laundering rules are forcing European multinationals to self-report or face potentially crippling penalties.

It may be that Angolan dockworkers will find more sympathetic ears amongst the Europeans than the Peoples’ Party that was supposed to liberate them.

 

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

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

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The dramatic recent arrests of high-ranking figures linked to former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos has gripped the public. Yet little or nothing has been revealed about the struggle to recover the billions of dollars stolen from the public purse during Dos Santos’s corrupt regime.

Extensive whistleblower reports published by Maka Angola have led to numerous investigations and prosecutions across the globe to bring to justice all those who illicitly enriched themselves during the Dos Santos years. But efforts to repatriate the missing billions have been complicated by the tortuous schemes devised by the principals to obscure the money trail.

One such example: Back in 2009, an Angolan company named Portmill Investimentos e Telecomunicações S.A. allegedly committed fraud in its acquisition of a majority shareholding in the Banco de Espírito Santo Angola (BESA). BESA was the Angolan subisdiary of one of Portugal’s oldest private banks, the Banco de Espírito Santos (BES).

By 2009 BES was already struggling under the weight of toxic debt, much of it related to bad loans made by its Angolan subsidiary. It sold 24% of the 75.94% stock it owned in BESA to Portmill for the sum of US $375 million dollars. On the face of it, this improved BES’s financial position, albeit only temporarily. BES finally went under in 2014 and was partially bailed out by Portugal’s Central Bank at great personal cost to the Portuguese taxpayer, not to mention the losses suffered by BES investors.

BESA too was in trouble in 2014 and within a year was refinanced, restructured and renamed as the Banco Económico, S.A. (BE). Portmill lost its majority share of BESA during the restructuring although it is believed that its interest was included in the 30.98% of the BE awarded to a hitherto-unknown company called Lektron Capital S.A., which apparently was just a name-change for Portmill.

Our readers will not be surprised to learn that the cast of characters at the heart of the BESA-Portmill scandal feature in many other Angolan financial scandals. At their head are three of the most powerful members of the previous Dos Santos administration, known as the “Presidential Triumvirate”: Manuel Vicente (at the time CEO of Sonangol and the country’s vice-president from 2012-2017), General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa” (Head of the Intelligence Bureau at the Presidency 1995-2017; and Minister of State 2010-2017) and General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento “Dino” (Head of Telecommunications in the Presidency from 1995-2010; and advisor to the Minister of State and Head of the Inteligence Bureau in the Presidency from 2010-2018). General Dino is best known as being at the forefront of Dos Santos’ private businesses.

Documentary records handed to Maka Angola appear to prove the fraud and its cover-up. They show conclusively that Portmill did not pay US $375 million for the 24% parcel of BESA stock from earned income, as Portmill claimed in evidence to Angolan prosecutors. Nor was the stock bought with a loan to Portmill from the Angolan Investment bank (Banco Angolano de Investimentos, BAI), approved for that specific purpose, as Portmill claimed in evidence given to Portuguese prosecutors.

Instead, Portmill apparently obtained the necessary total of US $375 million to pay for the BESA stock from BESA itself. It was able to do this by obtaining the sum indirectly via three other companies, also owned by the ‘Triumvirate’.

BESA – A scandal from start to finish

BESA was a scandal from start to finish, reportedly approving millions in unsecured loans to Angolan VIPs without keeping proper records. At least one of the top ten unsecured loans issued by BESA was made to Marta dos Santos, who happens to be a sister of former President dos Santos.

Just last month the bank’s former chairman, Álvaro Sobrinho, made a public statement to Angolan Television to defend his record and to claim that BESA was allowed to go under as a “political decision, given the personalities involved” – a reference to the role played by the triumvirate in the bank.

Within hours the triumvirate put their names to a statement blaming Sobrinho for the bank’s failure and accusing him of diverting monies for his own benefit.

And yet the story of Portmill and BESA is a classic example of how the triumvirate themselves were able to get their hands on public money for private benefit with no accountability to date. With the assistance and blessing of then President Dos Santos, Manuel Vicente, General Kopelipa and General Dino created a complex network of companies in the space of a few short years.

Generals Dino and Kopelipa, Dos Santos and Vicente (from left to right).

Together they formed a wholly-owned conglomerate called Grupo Aquattro International, which set up at least 40 separate subsidiary companies between 2007 and 2008, amongst them the Medianova Group (owner of TV Zimbo, O País, Rádio Mais), and Zahara (owner of the Kero supermarket chain).

The Grupo Aquattro stable of subsidiaries also included Portmill and three “shell” companies that obtained large loans from BESA: Althis Siderurgia, Delta Inertes e Betão (both set up on December 27, 2007) and Nazaki Hidrocarbonetos (incorporated on July 23, 2008). All were based at the same address in Luanda (Rua Luís Mota Fêo, Porta 3, 2º Andar, Apto. 5).

In November 2009, Althis, Delta and Nazaki applied for loans from BESA and Portmill stood surety for them, as evidenced by the loan guarantee signed by a Portmill official named Zandre Eudénio de Campos Finda on November 20, 2009.

One week later, on November 27, 2009, Althis received a BESA loan of US $135 million, while Nazaki and Delta received BESA loans of US $120 million apiece. Within hours all three companies immediately withdrew the entirety of their BESA monies and deposited them to a fourth party.

According to the documentation, each of the three shell companies received their BESA loan capital at an annual interest rate of 2%, with repayment due by November 27, 2017. Conveniently, the evaluator of this credit operation was António Carlos Oliveira, General’s Dino cousin.

And to whom were those three loans transferred to? The paper trail shows that they were deposited that very day, as if by magic, to Portmill Investimentos e Telecomunicações S.A’s account with BESA (Account No. 00006317320). Portmill ,which had a zero balance and no prior transactions, received a US $375 million deposit. A source explains to Maka Angola that the withdrawals and the deposits were simply a way of avoiding leaving no banking trail would show that the loans were going straight to Portmill. There was no physical withdrawal of the funds nor of their deposit.

In early December 2009 Portmill went on to obtain a loan for US $375 million from the Angolan Investment Bank (Banco Angolano de Investimentos, BAI) also stated to be for the purpose of purchasing the BESA stock.

The documentation provided by sources close to these transactions indicate that altogether, by these direct and indirect means, Portmill obtained a total of US $750 million from BESA and BAI. Yet it only paid out the agreed US $375 million for the purchase of 24% of BESA stock. What happened to the other half of the money? The only people who know for sure are Manuel Vicente, General Kopelipa and General Dino.

The triumvirate thus stands accused of using three of Grupo Aquattro’s subsidiary companies as a front to obtain a loan from BESA for the exact sum of US $375 million required by a fourth subsidiary, Portmill. This constitutes fraud, but although criminal investigations were opened in both Portugal and Angola, none of the triumvirate has yet been brought to trial.

Fraud, misappropriation of public funds and other crimes

The documents supplied to Maka Angola not only indicate that the Grupo Aquattro owners used three of their shell companies to obtain US $375 million from BESA under false pretences, before diverting the money back to Portmill to fund the purchase of BESA stock. They also appear to show that the Grupo Aquattro owners committed a second act of fraud when Portmill subsequently applied directly to the Angolan Investment Bank (BAI) for a loan of US $375 million for the purpose of purchasing the BESA shares and that these public funds were misappropriated as there is no record as to where they ended up.

Maka Angola took the precaution of consulting two international financial consultants who agreed to evaluate the documentary evidence and offer an opinion, provided they could be guaranteed anonymity. Both concurred in their opinions that the Portmill purchase of BESA stock was a sham.

Expert A said: “This was a manoeuvre aimed at hiding the trail of evidence that would have showed BESA was granting a loan that would enable Portmill to buy BESA stock to become a majority shareholder in that same bank.”

In Expert A’s opinon, BESA supplied the US$375 million via the third parties to Grupo Aquattro which then diverted the funds to Portmill so it could buy up 24% of BESA stock from BES, and thus take control of the Angolan bank. The manoeuvre gave the appearance of adding funds to the balance sheet of Portugese parent bank BES, but the same amount was showing up as a loan on the BESA accounts.

Was the fraud part of a conspiracy to defraud both Portuguese and Angolan investors? When trying to determine if there is criminal responsility, legal experts often cite the“Cui bono” rule: who would benefit from this scheme?

Why would the ‘presidential triumvirate’, notorious for their boundless greed, agree to a scheme to benefit the BES in Portugal, in exchange for stock in its Angolan subsidiary which was already in free fall? Is it feasible that the ‘Triumvirate’ would arrange the money-go-round to make the BES accounts look better without securing some quid-pro-quo?

Such a scheme didn’t only benefit the triumvirate by giving them an initial 24% controlling interest in the BESA bank without having to put up any of their own money.
What is not in dispute is that on December 10th, 2009, Portmill deposited the full US $375 million for the BESA share purchase in BES Portugal’s account with the Bank of America in New York. According to information received by Maka Angola the entire amount was later transferred to an account held by BES with the Banque Privée in Switzerland.

Expert B, a US-based international investor, said of this: “This could be a classic fraud, taking depositors’ money and putting it in the pocket of the majority shareholder, Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo.”

Expert B cited similar examples which led to the collapse of the Anglo-Irish Bank, the Allied Irish Bank (both in Ireland) and of Lehman Brothers (in the USA). In each case, bank principals who were fully aware that their respective financial institutions were in desperate straits gave out loans to third parties to buy back stock, thus appearing to enhance the value of their institutions by an injection of capital. A side-benefit was that the principals were also able to turn a profit.

One clue lies with General Dino. He was also the majority shareholder (with 62%) of Geni Novas Tecnologias S.A., alongside fellow Dos Santos associates António Pereira Van-Dúnem (20%) and Inocêncio Francisco Miguel (14%). Geni in turn owned 18.99% of the stock of BESA.

When BESA went bust and was reconstituted as the Banco Económico, Geni Novas Tecnologias S.A increased its capital share of the bank to 19.9%. Meanwhile, Portmill was excluded with much of its share of the stock passing to a company led by the same representative of Portmill, Zandre Eudénio Finda, Lektron Capital, S.A.

The scandal of how BESA became the Banco Económico and the allegations of illegality by General Dino with the complicity of the then BNA Governor, José de Lima Massano, were reported by Maka Angola here.

The governor of Angola’s Central Bank, José de Lima Massano.

It should also be noted that at the time of the alleged fraud, General Dino’s personal private company Dinagest was one of the bank’s largest clients, with deposits of close to US $300 million. And that when BESA went under, depositors such as General Dino and the President’s sister had their investments underwritten by the Angolan government.

An extraordinary cover-up

Amid all the allegations surrounding the collapse of BES and BESA, the Portuguese authorities began an investigation into Portmill’s actions. It stalled in the face of misleading information from the accused and an alleged attempt by one of the Angolan principals, Manuel Vicente, to corruptly influence Portuguese prosecutors into dropping this and other cases against him that have not come to trial because of the refusal by Angola to extradite Vicente.

Public Prosecutor Paulo Gonçalves from Portugal’s Central Department of Criminal Investigation and Prosecution (Departmento Central de Investigação e Açao Penal, DCIAP) initially set aside the Portmill case (N.º142/12.OTELSB), (which included evidence supplied by the author) on November 11, 2013.

Gonçalves’s justification for closing the file was that that “the company in question had submitted voluminous documentation related to its transactions to submit proof of earnings compatible with the operations it had conducted”.

Did Portmill and/or its lawyers overwhelm the Portuguese authorities with reams of information about business activities and earnings to divert attention from the loans it had obtained? Credible information about the BESA and BAI loans did make its way to the Portuguese Prosecutors but they seem to have failed to connect the dots.

The DCIAP, which falls within the hierarchy of Portugal’s Prosecution Service (the Ministério Público), documented both loans in Case n.º 333/14.9TELSB on February 16, 2015. It did so in the investigation into the alleged corruption of Portuguese prosecutor Orlando Figueira by Manuel Vicente (with the complicity of his Portuguese lawyer Paulo Amaral Blanco) in an attempt to get the cases against him, including Portmill, dropped.

And yet on Februrary 27th, 2015 Prosecutor Ricardo Matos, ordered that Case number 142/12.OTELSB, the investigation into Portmill’s acquisition of the BESA shares, be archived. Based on the information that the triumvirate had submitted, Matos said: “Portmill showed it had obtained a US $375 million loan from the Banco Angolano de Investimentos, S.A. to purchase the shares on December 7, 2009.” Matos ruled that there was therefore no relevant information to justify reopening the investigation.

In Angola too, evidence of the fraud was swept under the rug by the office of the Attorney-General of the Republic (Procuradoria-Geral da República, PGR, which serves as the their centralised public prosecution service) which took charge of the preliminary inquiry (06-A/2012-INQ) launched as a result of Maka Angola’s allegations of crimes by the presidential triumvirate, including the accusation that Portmill committed fraud in the BESA stock acquisition.

Assistant Angolan Attorney-General Domingos Sebastião Baxe and then Deputy Attorney-General Henrique dos Santos archived the inquiry on the grounds that Portmill acquired the BESA stock with its own legitimately-acquired funds. “The funds disbursed by the company Portmill Investimentos e Telecomunicações, S.A. were the result of money raised from its business activities – at the time it was a shareholder in Movicel Telecomunicações, S.A – and of a bank credit aimed at expanding the business, as previously authorized by the BNA on December 4, 2009 (…)”.

This ruling ignored the allegations regarding the BESA loan to three of Portmill’s fellow Grupo Aquattro subsidiaries as well as the missing US $375 millions from the BAI loan to Portmill. The state-owned oil giant Sonangol is the majority shareholder in both the BAI and BESA’s successor, the BE. On both counts this gives the Angolan State the right to pursue those missing funds in full.

A mountain of obstacles to recover the stolen billions

Many of the charges against the ‘Triumvirate’ – as with so many other members of the previous Angolan administration – have yet to be proven in a court of law but Vicente, Kopelipa and Dino were an integral part at the very highest level of what global experts described as the “official kleptocracy” that ruled Angola until September 2017.

A mountain of evidence already made public shows that President Dos Santos repeatedly flouted constitutional and legal niceties to involve party, government and military officials (high and low) in government-backed ‘business opportunities’, funded from the public purse (i.e. from oil revenues to Sonangol).

Dos Santos bought their loyalty by making them complicit in the crimes that enriched them (and his own family) beyond their wildest dreams. How else did so many become US dollar millionaires (and even billionaires) while officially on lowly salaries as they served in the Angolan armed forces, government and ruling party? For the sake of brevity, let’s call the complicit presidential family members, associates and administration officials, the ‘Dos Santos cartel’.

There are numerous examples already in the public domain of the schemes and manoeuvres repeatedly used by the Dos Santos cartel to misappropriate public funds for private gain as well as their subsequent attempts to conceal the provenance of the funds that enriched them so improbably.

Angola’s current administration under President João Lourenço pledged a war against corruption and there have been encouraging signs, notably in the most egregious cases that came to public attention, such as the arrest of one of President dos Santos’s sons (José Filomeno dos Santos, known as ‘Zenú).

However unravelling the dealings of the complex national and international network of corporate structures and financial transactions perfected by the Dos Santos cartel over four decades is no easy matter. Bringing so many rich and powerful criminals to justice is complicated by the fact that so many retain positions of political or military power.

The then and current governor of Angola’s Central Bank (BNA) José de Lima Massano was at the helm of the BNA when the transitioning BESA, under the chairmanship of General Dino, held an Extraodinary General Meeting (EGM) in 2014 to raise capital. BESA had been placed under the BNA’s administration, and Massano had appointed his deputy António Ramos da Cruz to lead the reestructuring of the private bank, as it interim CEO.

At that AGM, Sonangol had to fund the entire capital injection of US $650 millon required to restructure BESA into the Banco Económico. In effect Sonangol was not only paying for its own 39.4% stake in the new bank but also the stock awarded to two companies linked to General Dino: Lektron (which got 30.98%) and Geni (which got 19.9%) making them the bank’s majority shareholders.

The BNA, which was meant to act as the banking industry’s regulator, had already failed to notice (or turned a blind eye) as BESA and BAI funds were misappropriated to fund the people “saving it” back in 2009. And in 2014, the “new capital” demanded by the BNA to relaunch the bank as the Banco Economico, was in fact bleeding yet more capital from Sonangol to cover the losses.

Although President Lourenço sacked then BNA board director António Ramos da Cruz, the latter was allowed to go on to become a board director of the Banco Económico. And the man appointed by Lourenço to a second stint as BNA Governor, José de Lima Massano, is no less guilty of complicity.

At the very least, there is sufficient evidence now available to Angola’s PGR to use its authority under the Law of Cautionary Measures (Law 25/15 enacted on September 18, 2015). Under such law, it should freeze the assets of both the Banco Económico and any of its shareholders (such as Lektron and Geni) linked to the accusations of fraud, at least pending the completion of an investigation, and any subsequent trial.

Article 45 of that same law also gives the PGR the authority to place suspects in preventative custody and to place a hold on the suspects’ assets. The question is whether the new Angolan administration has sufficiently secured its own position to risk a move against the triumvirate at this stage.

It would have been helpful if the Portuguese had reopened the BESA investigation. There is sufficient evidence to raise questions as to why the Portuguese authorities failed to take further action in light of the serious economic consequences of the collapse of the Banco Espírito Santo and the cost to the Bank of Portugal and the state of its bailout.

Sources at the highest levels of the governments of both Portugal and Angola have suggested that pressure was brought to bear on the Portuguese Ministério Público to stall in order to avoid embarrassing damage to diplomatic and trade relations between the former colonial master and subject states. Not the least of their preoccupations is that in recent years, the Dos Santos cartel has acquired interests across a large swathe of the Portuguese economy and has the potential to cause havoc.

It remains to be seen whether the current governments in Portugal and Angola are sufficiently stable to move forward. Undoubtedly it will take courageous political leadership in both countries to ensure the judicial branches are not only allowed, but encouraged, to carry out their investigations into crimes of corruption regardless of the status of the individuals accused of such crimes. Until then, the enduring and pernicious influence of the Dos Santos cartel remains the main obstacle to the recovery of Angola’s stolen billions.

*D. Quaresma dos Santos translated and contributed to the English version of this investigation.

Angola’s ‘Money Pit’ Currency Museum

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The Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), the country’s central bank, is housed in one of the prettiest colonial buildings that the capital city has to offer: a confection of Portuguese colonial construction in pink and white, consisting of two colonnaded wings which meet at a circular tower topped by a distinctive red-tiled cupola. The ‘wedding cake’, completed in 1956, occupies an entire block of Luanda’s Marginal, the gently-curving and tree-lined avenue which runs the length of the picturesque bay.

Buried in the paved pedestrian square alongside the bank, some meters beneath an elaborate winged structure, is one of the city’s lesser known museums: the subterranean ‘Museu da Moeda’ (the Currency Museum). Opened in 2016, it may only have a single below-ground exhibition room with exhibits of dubious worth but this museum is worthy of a little more attention than it has received so far.

The Currency Museum project, which began in 2012 with an estimated budget of US $10 million swallowed up a stratospheric US $64.5 million in three short years. Aside from one small exhibition room and a 209-seat Amphitheatre, all there is to see is an entrance corridor, administrative office, equipment room and a 10-vehicle parking lot. Not only is there concern over the long-term solidity of the structure, it’s feared that this (pink-and) white elephant may yet sink into the adjacent sea.

It is a source of wonder to many at the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) as to how a relatively-modest heritage project could have escalated so alarmingly. By January 2015, when then BNA Governor José de Lima Massano pronounced the museum ready, the final bill so scandalized President José Eduardo dos Santos that he fired Lima Massano. An adviser to the President told Maka Angola that the arch-kleptocrat himself described the paucity of exhibits as “shameless” and demanded a refit to improve the permanent exhibition. That certainly added extra millions to the final cost and yet recent visitors complain that the exhibition remains uninspiring and that the ‘interactive’ exhibits are out of order.

Runaway costs phase by phase

This sorry saga began with Phase One of the project in July 2012 when Lima Massano entered into a contract with sibling architects Alexandre and António Falcão Costa Lopes (FCLAO Arquitectos Associados S.A.) to design and draw up the plans for the museum. The Costa Lopes brothers quoted a fee based on the final estimated construction cost of $10.1 million for a gross area of 2,615 square meters, amounting to a fee of US $458,775 for their work.

Three months later Lima Massano assigned Victor Manuel da Costa e Silva as Project Coordinator, with Filomeno Emanuel Rodrigues Fialho da Costa as his deputy. Fialho da Costa is an architect who has repeatedly been assigned to BNA construction projects even though the institution’s internal rules assign this role to the Department for Heritage Services.

Phase Two of the project, the “excavation, retaining walls and foundations” of the build was entrusted to a consortium formed by three companies (Griner, Somague and Tecnasol) by means of a contract in April 2013 worth Angolan US $14.4 million.

The original budget was already blown. Then “somehow” the gross area of the Museum project was increased to 4,350 square meters (66.35% bigger than the original design) and by the end of 2013 the cost of the build had doubled again to the equivalent of US $28 million.

On top of this, the architects discovered that the construction had expanded and established that the final gross area was 4,794 square meters. Given that their fee was based on 4.5% of the value of the finished construction, they appealed to the BNA for their fee to be revised upwards to US $1.2 million.

According to a memorandum dated December 27, 2013 and signed by BNA Deputy Project Advisor Filomeno da Costa, the Costa Lopes brothers were persuaded to agree to a final fee of US $940,000, a ‘generous’ discount of some US $340,000. How so? Well, the Costa Lopes brothers were the Dos Santos régime’s preferred architects for many of the state’s prestige construction projects. They had drawn up multi-million-dollar plans for the regeneration of Luanda’s bayside regeneration (Marginal da Baía de Luanda) as well as for numerous real estate investment projects for the Banco Atlântico (Atlantic Bank, now rebranded as ‘Millenium Atlântico’) amongst others.

They were also the architects behind the headquarters of the controversial Banco Espírito Santo Angola (BESA, now restructured and renamed as the Banco Económico). This 33-storey building (including five underground levels), cost 81 million Euros (approximately US $92.15 million at current exchange rates) for a 48,000 square meter area.

For Phase Three of the construction, in April 2014 José de Lima Massano signed a further contract with Griner and the Portuguese Somague (two of the three constructions firms in the original consortium) for “internal structure and finishing” of the enclosed space for the Money Museum. The value of the contract for Phase Three works was equivalent to another US $13.6 million.

The governor of Angola’s Central Bank, José de Lima Massano.

Nonetheless, the museum space was still not actually ‘finished’ – that became Phase Four of the project. Clearly a fan of the civil construction companies Griner and Somague, Lima Massano ordered the Project Coordinator, Victor Manuel da Costa e Silva, to sign yet another contract with the consortium in November 2014 for “architecture and finishing”, worth a further US $17.7 million. At this stage the project costs had already quadrupled.

Two months later when Dos Santos blew his top and sacked him, Lima Massano went back to his former job as Chairman of the Board at the Angolan Investment Bank (Banco Angolano de Investimento, BAI, formerly known as the African Investment Bank), which he had left in 2010 upon his appointment as BNA Governor.

It’s no coincidence that BAI is the majority stockholder in Griner and that Lima Massano retained a 2% share of BAI throughout his tenure as BNA Governor. As Maka Angola previously reported, ownership of BAI was distributed amongst former Sonangol executives and colleagues and Dos Santos régime associates, notably then Sonangol’s London Director José Carlos de Castro Paiva with 18.5% and former Chairman Manuel Vicente with 8.6%. Sonangol itself retained 8.5%.

Griner and Somague then submitted a bill for an additional US $4.6 million for Phase Five: “alterations, structures and special installations”. José Pedro de Morais had by now taken over as BNA Governor and it was his signature on the contract for Phase Five, dated May 2015 (with no day) – even though the actual works had been concluded the previous February.

A further US $1.2 million went to the engineering consultancy firm Africonsult, to inspect Phases Two, Three, Four and Five of the build. The first contract signed by Africonsult’s Fernando Álvaro C. Leal Machado in April 2013 with Lima Massano, was worth some US $468,000. Curiously, the contract for the inspection of Phase Three was signed retroactively in 2015 by José Pedro de Morais, even though Phase Three had concluded more than a year before his appointment. (Only the year is specified under the signatures of De Morais and Leal Machado). By now, the cost for this small basement museum had exceeded US $64.5 million and they were still not done.

Exhibit and refit

What was to be exhibited in this museum? Although by law there should have been a public tender for supplying content, the contract was arbitrarily awarded without competition to a company called ComCultura Lda. Also contrary to custom and practice, the contract, signed then and there in August 2014 by José de Lima Massano and Víctor Manuel da Costa e Silva required the BNA to pay 90% of the agreed fee upfront to ComCultura Lda., with the residual 10% due upon the conclusion of the ‘work’.

In return ComCultura was to supply services including “museological and museographic consultancy, the financing and licensing of Index Rerum software and multimedia, interactive and exhibition solutions and interpretative content”.

The sum worth of the contracts with ComCultura would be close to US $8.8 million. And who was behind ComCultura? The stated partners in the company when it was registered in 2013 were António Manuel Plácido Canhão Veloso and an Angolan government official named Joaquim Duarte José Gomes. Officially he was Director of the Planning Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development; unofficially he had been known to Angolans as the shadow minister – the real power behind the scenes at the Ministry – for more than two decades.

After replacing Lima Massano, José Pedro de Morais’s term as BNA Governor coincided with the phase of equipping the museum with exhibit materials. With an empty space to fill, De Morais and ComCultura’s Gomes and Veloso signed a further contract in April 2015 for approximately US $4 million. With this, provision of exhibit materials had amounted to close to US $12.8 million.

Beach sand and two shells on a pad make one of the exhibits.

In addition, De Morais then called upon an old friend, Miroslav Petrovic, who had served as Ambassador to Angola for the former Yugoslavia. He drew up an undated document and then in February 2016 ordered the BNA Deputy Governor António Ramos da Cruz to sign a one-year contract with Miroslav Petrovic, to supply “coins and bank notes from the 192 member countries of the United Nations” in return for reimbursement of the US dollar equivalent of the currency’s face value plus a 30% commission fee.

One month later Ramos da Cruz and Petrovic signed a contract specifying monthly payments upon submission of invoices for the supply of the foreign coins and banknotes, with the BNA reimbursing the equivalent face value of the monies in US dollars at the official exchange rate, along with the commission fee, which had somehow increased to 40%. The contract also allowed for unlimited reimbursement of Petrovic’s travel expenses to Brazil, Dubai, France, Russia and Singapore – including all flights, accommodation, meals and local transport. It has been impossible to determine exactly how much all this cost.

By now, the costs of building and supplying exhibits had topped US $77.3 million and it wasn’t over yet.

Enter the Archbishop

By March 2016 Pedro de Morais was history and Valter Filipe Duarte da Silva (nicknamed the ‘Archbishop’) had been appointed BNA Governor. Da Silva entered into a contract with a company named I3C Limitada, owned by a former presidential adviser named Francisco Simão Helena, to provide “the design, development and supply of multimedia solutions, equipment and installations for interactive and multimedia exhibits” at a cost of US$3.4 million. This took the running total for the construction and equipping (twice over) of the museum to US 80.7 million.

Once open, the museum would then have “maintenance costs”. The ‘Archbishop’ awarded one maintenance contract in April 2017 to a company named Projem (Prestação de Serviços de Limpeza S.A., also known as Projem Empreendimento e Participaçōes). It was worth US $2.5 million for “technical and industrial museum cleaning services, specialized hygiene services and the supply of gardening materials and consumables”. The contract was signed by Valter Filipe and the President of the Projem Board of Directors, Luzia Isabel A. Ferreira. Like all companies doing business with the bank, Projem had a Dos Santos Administration connection, in this case one Oliveira Guilherme, who was simultaneously the chief of staff of then spy chief, General André Sango (Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Serviço de Inteligência Externa, SIE).

On the same day (April 24, 2017) Valter Filipe also gave orders for a contract to be signed with a company named P & W Imóveis – Gestão Imobiliária e Prestação de Serviços Lda., a firm linked to Frederico Cardoso, a former Secretary of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet) currently serving as the Chief of Staff in the Office of the President.

This contract was for “preventative and corrective maintenance services to the fire alarm system, hydraulic installations and structural and constituent elements of the building of the Currency Museum”. That alone was worth US $3.4 million a year, enough to build and equip an entire fire station – something that the capital city is desperate in need of. In all, the two maintenance contracts would amount to nearly US $6 million.

Worth the money?

Leaving aside the actual worth of this museum, there are some at the BNA who openly regret that the initial plan for building the museum in Talatona was set aside when former BNA governor Amadeu Maurício decided to appropriate the land for himself. They say that sooner or later, in spite of the expensive pump and drainage systems installed, the current museum is bound to suffer a flood because it lies below sea level and is located so close to the water’s edge on the Bay of Luanda. They point to an incident that occurred during construction, when the slab collapsed during the pouring of concrete. Information supplied to Maka Angola suggests that the construction consortium failed to give any explanation for the collapse, repaired the damage, and thereafter the BNA drew a veil over the event. Civil construction engineers have told Maka Angola that an issue like that could compromise the solidity and durability of the structure.

There have been repeated complaints about the equipment supplied by ComCultura, in particular the interactive technology exhibits, some of which are still not operational, and also about the quality and relevance of the exhibits. One BNA source told us “we had to insist upon the inclusion of an image of a slave as an historic instrument of exchange because the Portuguese consultants wanted to exclude that side of our history, as though there had never been a slave trade”.

Whether you live in Luanda or are visiting, we recommend you check out this Museum and decide for yourselves whether it has any value, other than that of standing as a monument to corruption and waste and then let the current Administration know what you think of a Currency Museum that already cost nearly US $81 million and a further US $6 million a year in maintenance costs.

Was it worth the money? You might also want to ask what possessed President João Lourenço to reappoint Lima Massano as Governor of the BNA, given his role in this whole sorry affair. Why put the old fox back in charge of the hen house?

Sadly, the evidence so far suggests this museum is nothing more than a monument to the vanity, greed and self-interest of a group of Dos Santos’ régime associates who took millions of dollars from the public purse for a project of no real value to the people of Angola, who continue to wait for the country’s oil wealth to be put into providing real public services.

Angola: When the Wolves can Dance with the Goats

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This is an edited version of the presentation made at the Conference: A Celebration of Mandela’s Legacy and a Reflection on Democracy and Good Governance in Africa.

 

I am honored to return to the European Parliament as a guest of the Socialists and Democrats Group, for Africa Week. This meeting is special – it coincides with the centenary of the birth of one of Africa’s most celebrated leaders, Nelson Mandela. So it is a fitting day on which we take the opportunity to pay homage to his wise legacy and share our views on democracy and good governance.

In Africa, what counts as democracy and good governance?

The definition of these two concepts has spawned many political arguments – not to mention an entire industry of scholarship. In homage to Mandela, and with regard to the relationship between rulers and the ruled on the African continent, allow me to quote an Angolan proverb: “when the drums are fine-tuned, then wolves and goats can dance together.”

One of the tragedies of African politics is that more often than not the so-called “big men” who hold political power are wolves who prey on their own people: oppressing, robbing and debasing them. For too many years this was the case in Angola. And yet – right now – our political class has an historic opportunity to change rhythm. Will our leaders learn to march to the beat the people want to hear?

President João Lourenço came to power just over a year ago with a vow to challenge the status quo established by his own party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the ruling MPLA. In power for 43 years, since Independence from Portugal in 1975, the party has yet fully to honour its name and liberate the Angolan people from the poverty that debases their lives.

Under José Eduardo dos Santos, the collective leadership of the ruling party institutionalized corruption as a way of life. It began to seem that the primary purpose for those who held political power in Angola was to loot and pillage. They enriched themselves while stamping their boot in the face of critics and opponents. It was the era of insatiable and wicked wolves and the rest of society had to adapt to survive.

Over the past year there have been heartening signs of change. First and foremost, President Lourenço has begun to address the scourge of corruption, making it clear that his peers in the highest reaches of the ruling party no longer enjoy impunity. Already an example has been made of some senior figures, such as MPLA politburo member and former Transport Minister Augusto Tomás and – to the shock of many – even one of former President Dos Santos’s sons, Zenú.

Secondly, President Lourenço can be credited with encouraging greater freedom of expression and fostering new space for dialogue and accountability. He has shown good will, seemingly wanting to make things right.

For the first time in the country’s recent history there are signs that all relevant sectors of society embrace the same desire for change, starting with the dismantling of the pervasive greed and institutionalised corruption of the Dos Santos era that fueled so much dysfunction, inefficiency and violent repression.

Angola was branded a kleptocracy – and it could not have become so corrupt without the complicity of many foreign partners also infected by greed. Mutually-lucrative arrangements allowed the Angolan executive branch to buy the veneer of international legitimacy while bleeding the country dry. Under Dos Santos the state institutions that could and should underpin democracy – the legislature and the judiciary – were emasculated.

If he is sincere about effecting real change, then President Lourenço should be encouraged to open lines of communication both with his political opponents and representatives of Angolan civil society. By being seen to listen to disparate voices, and take on board the concerns of all Angolans, he could build a broad alliance beyond petty partisan loyalties to support him to overcome the challenges ahead.

First and foremost is the economy. Angola has been overly dependent on a single resource, oil. It provides 95% of export revenues. After a dip, in September 2017 when President Lourenço took office, the oil price averaged just over US $50 a barrel. Currently it averages around US $75 a barrel. And yet the rising price has contributed nothing to the country’s economic growth because much of Angola’s oil output is shipped to China to service the debt. The country has borrowed up to US $50 billion from China. Almost half of the entire State Budget for 2019 (the equivalent of more than 40 million Euros a day) is set aside to service the debt.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, Angola’s GDP dropped 7.4% in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. Hundreds of companies have gone bankrupt contributing to the rise in the unemployment rate which officially stands at more than 20 percent. In fact, the number of Angolans without formal paid employment is far higher. Neither the government nor the private sector are creating enough jobs to make a dent in the high unemployment rate and most Angolans rely on the ‘informal’ sector to get by.

Part of the problem lies with the economic team inherited by President Lourenço, with many officials who served under President Dos Santos and who are wedded to the status quo. The Dos Santos ‘wolf pack’ has too many members, making for an overlarge and disjointed group incapable of tabling solutions to pry the former ruling elite from every aspect of the economic sector. These economic ‘advisors’ are betting on a continued rise in oil prices and devaluation to help turn things around. Since January this year, Angola’s currency, the Kwanza, has been devalued by more than 40% the US Dollar and the Euro.

There is no doubt that the health of the economy will be a major factor in determining how Angolans rate the Lourenço Administration. If things go badly, a rising tide of public discontent and rancour could prompt many in the MPLA leadership to silence dissent as they have in the past. The President’s good intentions are impeded by a lack of new blood in his own party to replace the old guard, who are too accustomed to a ‘winner-takes-all’ system and have a partisan mentality which allows only their comrades – other than foreign consultants – a role in running the country.

Let me give you an all-too-recent example – on October, 25, the President issued a decree authorizing the state-oil company Sonangol to spend US $50 million on foreign consultants without putting anything out to public tender. There can be no business rationale for pouring money into this bottomless pit when Sonangol has already spent millions upon millions of dollars on international consultants to no avail.

How about Constitutional Reform?

The revised Angolan constitution approved in 2010 was tailored to suit the ‘Napoleonic’ President Dos Santos, sanctioning an imperial presidency which is not subject to any oversight. In reality, the Angolan ‘democracy’ is nothing more than an elective dictatorship with an election process that can too easily be hijacked to favour the incumbent governing party.

Under the existing constitution, the electorate vote for one or other of the parties in the contest. The first name on the list of the winning party becomes President, accumulating the powers of Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The President has enormous powers of patronage without check or balance, for example, the sole right to appoint senior judges without legislative approval. Thanks to a ruling by the allies he appointed to the Constitutional Court, President Dos Santos was able to remove the requirement for parliamentary oversight of his government altogether.

He defused any possibility of dissent by ensuring all involved – whether judges or members of parliament – were well rewarded. That inherited ‘status quo’ meant President Lourenço was obliged to agree US $13 million this year towards luxury cars for every member of parliament – and that’s on top of the US $77 million last year. Meanwhile in all too many Angolan homes, children go hungry.

As former US President Barack Obama once said: “Africa does not need strong men but strong institutions”. For real democracy to take root in Angola there has to be constitutional reform to establish a basic system of checks and balances on the actions of the President of the Republic. President Lourenço’s statements of good intention cannot be a substitute for the devolution of such powers to the state institutions. Instead of accepting the status quo that allows him to be just another African strong-man dispensing largesse, President Lourenço should be encouraged to be a visionary reformist, restoring the balance of powers between the democratic estates, ensuring that all from the highest to the lowest in the land, respect the rule of law.

The choice facing João Lourenço is whether to succumb to the temptation of accepting the unchecked powers granted him or to follow Mandela’s example, eschewing personal power and enrichment for the greater good. Does he have the strength to resist temptation and the power to inspire his people with real change? Let’s hope wisdom will inspire a drumbeat that gets wolves and goats dancing together.

Thank you.

Repairing Angola’s Central Bank

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In the wake of recent revelations of mismanagement and corruption at the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), its Governor, José de Lima Massano, took to the airwaves in an attempt to defend his reputation and that of the bank. It was all to no avail, because many high-ranking officials have taken to heart the new Angolan President’s strictures against corruption and are willing to blow the whistle, backing up their claims with documentary proof. It’s evidence that should prompt the Attorney-General’s office to open an investigation.

Maka Angola has been given a copy of the contract signed in 2013 for the rehabilitation of the central bank’s historic main building, signed by Massano during his first stint at BNA governor. As with other projects (like the much-derided Currency Museum), he hired the Angolan subsidiary of the Portuguese construction firm Somague to do the work.

Somague stands accused of routinely padding costs on state contracts. No surprise then that the budgeted US $11 million to refurbish the BNA building doubled along the way. Five years and US $22 million later, works are still continuing.

Interviewed on the state radio station, Rádio Nacional de Angola, Massano made no attempt to explain the overbilling and padding that made a US $10 million museum end up costing Angola more than US $80 million. He tried to absolve himself of responsibility by claiming that a committee at the bank had selected Somague and two partners for the works – but he gave no detail to back that up.

Massano also claimed that he was simply following in the footsteps of his predecessors in ensuring the building was well-maintained. Again, he avoided mentioning the cost of the welter of “minor adjustments” that he said were the reason the works had not yet finished.

The fact is Massano has a lot of explaining to do, in particular to President João Lourenço who entrusted him with a second term as Governor in the belief he was honourable and trustworthy.

For example, when he signed the contract with Somague in 2013 why did he insist on a confidentiality clause? Why was it so important to keep the information about the repairs and their cost, a secret?

Secondly, the contract omitted any mention of the scope and duration of the works, stating only that they will be considered complete after the contractor submits the work to final inspection.

Thirdly, why in January 2015 did Massano authorize an extra US $11.2 million for “complementary works” as per his Memorandum 01/ACS/15. On top of that, there have been a myriad of additions to the contract, which led the Property and Works Department (Departamento de Património e Serviços (DPS) to mischievously tag them as “coffee expenses”.

The BNA officials who justified these expenses are no longer in their jobs: former BNA administrator Costa e Silva and former DPS Director Madalena Disso, to whom Massano had entrusted oversight of the works. This happy pair inflated the building costs by millions by signing off on individual ‘additions’ of the contract.

Some of the expense authorizations seen by Maka Angola are for items that should be part of the original contract, such as replacing walls and suspended ceilings, rebuilding stairs and partitions, dismantling doors and door frames with corresponding masonry work, replacing water pipes and drains for an unspecified bathroom, replacing the vinyl countertop on a cupboard, installing a room divider, applying lacquer to the wooden doors, and of course preparations and clean-up. Each of these “extras” was alleged to have cost thousands, in many cases tens of thousands, of dollars. These alone added up to half a million dollars over a four year period.

For example, as soon as he signed the initial contract for the refurbishment of the BNA, Massano leased five nearby properties, including two entire floors of the Edifício Fénix for the affected departments, incurring rental costs of close to US $300,000 a month. That’s US $3.6 million dollars a year, for five years and counting. So far, the total rental cost is up toUS $18 million. And who were the landlords who benefited? One is a former BNA governor, Amadeu Maurício, who lent them a nearby property for the use of the BNA’s media office. The longer the works went on, the more money there was to be made all around. Sources tell us it’s no wonder Somague is in no hurry to leave the BNA building.

Grain by grain, dollar by dollar, pockets were filled – allegedly with the complicity of successive Bank of Angola governors. Between 2013 and 2018 José de Lima Massano, José Pedro de Morais and Valter Filipe – whether by omission or commission – have given their imprimatur to every over-run. Some of those who have worked most closely with them, now say it’s time they were held to account.

 

*Translated and edited by D. Quaresma dos Santos

Angolan Injustice: The Case of the ‘Kidnapped’ Pastor

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The reported kidnap of an elderly pastor belonging to the Church of Seventh Day Adventists in Angola made for sensational headlines. Pastor Daniel Cem alleged church leaders had ordered his abduction in November 2015 and claimed his family had to pay a ransom of 30 million Kwanzas (US $220,000 at the time) to secure his release.

Pastor Cem named the Adventist Church’s regional Executive Secretary as having organized the kidnap. He then accused the President and Chief Financial Officer of defamation for passing around the church hierarchy an anonymous letter purporting to confess that the kidnap was staged by Cem’s own family to extort money from the church.

After a controversial trial in December 2017, six members of the Adventist church, including the three northern region leaders, were found guilty and sentenced to between one and five years in prison. They have been bailed, pending appeal, but are confined to Luanda.

The ‘Victim’

Daniel Cem was a respected pastor in the Church of Seventh Day Adventists in Angola when in December 2010 the Southern African division of the Church opened a second regional headquarters in Luanda and selected two experienced and trusted administrators to run it.

Pastor Passmore Hachalinga, a Zambian national was directed to serve as regional President with Pastor Burns Sibanda, a Zimbabwean, as Chief Financial Officer – experienced men of impeccable reputation with decades of service. An Angolan, Teixeira Mateus Vinte, was appointed alongside them as Executive Secretary of the new Adventist Northern Region. The three men were to supervise the church’s work across 10 of the country’s 18 provinces. They set up two sub-offices, one for the Northeast and the other for the North and oversaw the election of local pastors to run them.

Pastor Cem was elected to run the North Office. Gradually, disturbing complaints about his leadership began to reach the senior administrators. A first official financial audit in 2014 revealed the pastor had failed to comply with the church’s operating procedures and financial controls. He was believed to have diverted funds to unapproved ends. A second audit the following year confirmed further financial mismanagement and at the Church’s September audit committee meeting it was made clear to Pastor Cem that he would not be reinstated when his term of office ended in December 2015.

Pastor Daniel Cem.

The ‘Kidnap’

At 7am on October 29, 2015 Pastor Cem’s nephew Domingos Terça Massaqui, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Angolan Armed Forces, turned up at the criminal investigation department in the Kilamba Kiaxi neighbourhood. He’d come to report that his uncle had been kidnapped by armed men and taken away in a silver-grey Toyota Tundra pick-up truck.

In fact, Pastor Cem was at the Church’s regional office that day for a finance meeting. The regional church hierarchy were deliberating whether to invest 100 million kwanzas in land for a future Adventist University. This must have been somewhat alarming to Pastor Cem as his family owned an educational institute (the Instituto Superior Politécnico Internacional de Angola – ISIA) whose Adventist student numbers and income would be threatened by the establishment of a more prestigious institution nearby. In fact the proposal was approved and the meeting broke up at 5pm.

At 7pm as Daniel Cem approached his home, neighbours saw him being bundled into a pick-up truck by armed men. The circumstances were identical to those reported by Lt Col Terça Massaqui twelve hours beforehand. Within 30 minutes, members of the Cem family had alerted the church leadership in Luanda and pastors began arriving at their home to offer support.

The following morning (Friday October 30) the Adventist regional administrators were told by the pastor’s wife that she’d received a phone call from her missing husband at 9pm the previous evening. He also spoke to fellow Adventist Garcia José Dala, who worked for Pastor Cem’s brother Carlos at the Polytechnic. Carlos had telephoned Garcia, claiming that he was in the United States, asking him to head over to Pastor Cem’s house to help the family.

Daniel Cem called back at 1am, this time to convey a demand that the church pay a ransom of 100 million kwanzas for his release. As chief financial officer, Pastor Sibanda contacted the divisional office in South Africa for advice. He was told, categorically, that in no circumstances would the church ever pay a ransom. He counselled the family to call the police but the pastor’s wife said she’d been told that Daniel would be killed if they did.

The Adventist divisional headquarters in South Africa stressed that their Angolan colleagues were to take no part in any negotiations. To support the family, they convened a day of fasting and prayer for the safe return of Daniel Cem, observed throughout the region’s Seventh Day Adventist churches the following day, their Sabbath (Saturday October 30).

Meanwhile Carlos Cem had turned up to pressure the church officials to pay the ransom. They demurred. In the early hours of Sunday November 1, Pastor Hachalinga was woken by a phone call. It was 2am and Daniel Cem was on the line. He announced that he’d negotiated a discount and begged his superior to use church funds to pay the now-reduced 30-million-kwanza ransom. When Pastor Hachalinga said he was prohibited from doing so, he hung up.

Nonetheless, by Monday November 2, Daniel Cem was back at the family home. Apparently, in spite of it being a bank holiday weekend, his family had got hold of 30 million kwanzas to pay the kidnappers.

Bizarre and inconsistent statements

Daniel Cem’s statement to police the following day was quite remarkable. Interviewed by Superintendent Nelson Monteiro, he accused the church’s executive secretary, Teixeira Mateus Vinte, of organizing the kidnap. And he named his co-religionists Adão Hebo, João Sonhi and Garcia José Dala as being involved. He said they had planned to kill him on his doorstep. Instead, he’d been taken to Benguela and held in a small, smelly bathroom. At trial, he subsequently changed this statement to say he’d been held at the house of one of his abductors, locked into a closet with children’s toys

Meanwhile Detective Nelito Sucama discovered that special agents from the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) had witnessed the handover of the ransom. Apparently, they had an unobstructed view as a silver-grey Toyota Tundra drove up to make the exchange. Yet the SIC agents failed to apprehend the suspects. Their excuse was that the Toyota Tundra outran their Hyundai Elantra.

There were numerous anomalies in the statements given by members of the Cem family and the SIC agents. The Cem family said the ransom handover was at 9pm on November 1; the SIC agents said it was 11pm. Daniel Cem said his wife had handed over a sack of money to the kidnappers behind some large garbage containers (implying out of sight of the street). He said the kidnappers then drove off a few hundred metres, before stopping to release him. Once free, he called his wife who was sitting with the SIC agents in their car.

The suspect vehicle matched the description and license plate number given to police by Lt Col Massaqui twelve hours before the actual kidnap. Fatally for an Adventist parishioner named João Alfredo Dala (no relation to Garcia José Dala), these details matched his pick-up truck.

João Dala had six witnesses to the fact that he was with his daughter a long way from Luanda (in Luvo on the border of the northwestern province of Zaire) on the day of the kidnap. His truck details were enough to get him arrested and tortured to extract a bloodstained confession, which he later retracted.

On November 3, Daniel Cem made an extraordinary statement to the SIC investigating officers in the presence of their commander, Chief Superintendent Pedro Lufungula. He said that his kidnappers had given him 10 million kwanzas. He gave a convoluted and barely credible explanation – that in exchange for receiving the ransom payment in Angolan kwanzas, they would compensate him. He said they even gave him the 10 million on November 1 shortly before driving him to pick up the 30 million ransom from his wife. Incredible though it may seem, these details were transcribed into his written statement and duly signed as having taken place on November 2.

The Anonymous Letter

At the church service on Saturday November 28, a parishioner pressed a sealed envelope into Pastor Sibanda’s hands. It contained an anonymous letter, purporting to be from a member of Daniel Cem’s family, confessing that the kidnap was a sham aimed at extorting money from the church. Pastor Sibanda shared the letter with his senior colleagues and they decided to show it to Daniel Cem to see what he made of it. He said it was a fake. The church leaders asked him if they should hand it to the police and he agreed they should.

The church leaders were notified on December 1 to present themselves at the SIC station for questioning on December 2. They did. But due to a power cut they were told to come back the following day. Pastor Sibanda made a statement on December 3.

On December 6 during a funeral service, Daniel Cem told Pastor Sibanda that the police had made two arrests. One of these was João Alfredo Dala, whose 15-hour interrogation was filmed on a cellphone by one of those present. The pictures are gruesome. They show him being hit on the head with a type of machete called a catana, bleeding profusely. Amongst various forms of extreme violence, they pulled out his big toe nail, mutilated his genitals and left him severely injured and permanently scarred. He was coerced into making a statement incriminating the Adventist northern region administrators.

João Dala under torture.

Pastor Passmore Hachalinga then faced a two-day interrogation by investigating officers in the presence of Chief Superintendent Pedro Lufungula, the head of SIC’s organised crime squad, and Domingos Mário who worked with Interpol. His statement was also entered into the record.

Asked by the investigating officer if he thought the kidnap was fake, Pastor Hachalinga said he couldn’t know for sure but the circumstances raised questions that needed clarification: for example how the family had managed to get hold of 30 million kwanzas during a bank holiday weekend when the banks were closed the entire time.

He also found it strange that plain clothes officers were in the vicinity to help with the handover of the money – yet had failed to intervene and arrest the kidnappers. And why didn’t the officers question Daniel Cem straight away?

Daniel Cem was re-examined on January 21, 2016. Once again, he affirmed that he had been released on November 2, contradicting the version of the SIC agents present for the handover.

Months went by. Then in April, the church leaders were given official notification that they were suspects in the kidnapping of Daniel Cem and of defamation for having produced and circulated the anonymous letter. Nothing further happened until October 2016 when they were called into the SIC office for a pre-trial conference with the public prosecutor. As both sides went through the evidence, the anomalies suggested the accusations against them had been thoroughly discredited.

Meanwhile Daniel Cem’s term of office as chief of the northern sub-office had expired but the Church felt he could not be reassigned to pastoral duties until the police investigation was officially closed, so he remained on paid leave with full benefits. It appeared the investigation had stalled.

Case reopened

Unexpectedly, in April 2017 the case was reopened. Five people faced kidnapping charges; Pastor Hachalinga and Pastor Sibanda faced charges of defamation. They remained free with no restrictions pending trial.

The defendants were notified to attend a hearing at the Criminal Division of Luanda’s 13 Provincial Court on Friday August 25. On arrival, they were told they were under arrest. They were forced to sign documents before they or their lawyers were given any chance to read them and then, to their horror, the clerics found themselves thrown into a prison van and transferred directly to Viana, where they were humiliatingly strip-searched and placed in cells.

The arrest warrant mystifyingly claimed they were being remanded in custody on a murder charge. Nothing could be done until after the weekend when their lawyers secured their release.

The trial opened on September 29, 2017, was adjourned to October 17 and continued in session for just over two months. The accused had already faced trial by media, fuelled by accusations and inflammatory statements from family members and associates of Pastor Cem, who throughout was presented as an innocent victim.

The trial was a farce. At one stage, the alleged kidnap victim was asked to bring a case containing 30 million kwanzas in cash to court, to show that Daniel Cem’s wife would have been capable of carrying such an amount on her own. The case was then taken to the judge’s chambers “for safe-keeping” and witnesses later saw it being transferred from the judge’s chambers to his car. As for the supposed 30 million kwanzas that had allegedly been handed to the kidnappers, there was no trace.

At various points, Judge João António Francisco showed bias e.g. adducing without having heard it in testimony that Cem would have been able to hear children playing from his place of confinement in a closet. He refused to accept evidence of the torture of João Alfredo Dala, who showed his scars in court and claimed that Daniel Cem had conspired with SIC Operations Chief Fernando Receado and Provincial Assistant Director Ngola Kina to coerce a false confession from him and had been present and participated in the violence he suffered.

After all the evidence and testimony had been presented, the public prosecutor admitted it was insufficient to convict and called on the judge to acquit. That seemed to inflame Judge João António Francisco who called a recess until the sentencing hearing, set for December 29, saying “they would see who was the boss of this court”.

No travel restrictions were placed on the defendants in the interim and Pastor Sibanda travelled to his native Zimbabwe for Christmas, returning to Angola on December 27, in good time for the hearing. When Pastor Sibanda and Pastor Hachalinga arrived in court with their lawyers, they were astonished to be re-arrested, allegedly on the grounds that they had “tried to flee the country” even though they were clearly present.

They then sat stupefied as the Judge pronounced them all guilty and passed sentences of between one and five years in prison. Judge João António Francisco also ordered their Church to pay the Cem family 45 million kwanzas – 30 million in ‘restitution’ for the ransom they claimed to have paid and a further 15 million in damages for having defamed him.

From left to right: João Alfredo Dala, Teixeira Vinte, Garcia Dala, Passmore Hachalinga e Burns Sibanda

Miscarriage of Justice

The church’s executive secretary, Teixeira Mateus Vinte was found guilty on two charges: of defamation and of ordering the kidnap and was sentenced to five years. Pastor Adão Hebo and two parishioners, the truck-owner João Alfredo Dala and Polytechnic employee Garcia José Dala (no relation) were also found guilty of planning the abduction and were sentenced to four years. Adventist President Passmore Hachalinga and Chief Financial Officer Burns Sibanda were found guilty of defamation and sentenced to three years.

They were taken straight from the courthouse back to Viana prison.

The defence lawyers launched immediate appeals. They made official complaints about the conduct of Judge João António Francisco, for failing to follow procedure both during and after the trial. He had also refused to issue a written copy of his judgement and was obstructing process at every turn.

The Supreme Court of Angola heard the ‘habeas corpus’ plea on January 3, 2018 and ruled on February 15 that the arrests and continued detention were unlawful. The defendants should be released on bail, pending their appeals. The 13th Court took its time in complying with the Supreme Court decision. Although they should never have been sent there in the first place, the Adventists remained incarcerated for 62 days.

The squalid and gruelling conditions in Viana were particularly trying for the elderly President and Chief Financial Officer of the Adventist Church, both over 60. Pastor Sibanda is also battling prostate cancer for which he was denied treatment. Meanwhile, the injuries sustained by João Alfredo Dala were so grave that although admitted to hospital for surgery, he did not survive. He protested his innocence right up to his death in September 2018. He left a statement naming the police officers and SIC agents who had invaded his home without a warrant, tied up all nine family members including young children and stolen a large sum of money from him before taking him to the 48th Police Station where he was so viciously assaulted.

Photographs, witness statements and documentary evidence supplied to Maka Angola support the accusation that Pastor Daniel Cem conspired with family members to stage his own kidnap. As stated in the infamous ‘anonymous letter’, the 60-year-old Pastor had both financial and other motives for the elaborate scam:

Status: Cem had failed to secure a more senior position in the church hierarchy and was on the verge of being demoted. He hoped the sympathy generated over his ‘ordeal’ might persuade fellow church elders to re-elect him for the position he was about to lose or even to substitute one of his superiors;

Revenge: Cem wanted to cause trouble for the church leaders who had ‘ruined’ him by revealing his mismanagement of church funds.

Money: The church leadership who had spurned him were planning to invest in land for an Adventist university, which he believed would draw Adventist students and income away from the polytechnic owned and run by the Cem family. If the church were to ‘lose’ the sum of 100 million kwanzas (US $735,000 at the time) set aside for the land purchase, it would delay or cancel that project; Cem also feared that demotion back to pastoral work would reduce his income just as he approached retirement age.

When their administrators were accused by Daniel Cem, the Adventist Church hierarchy in South Africa believed they should let the Angolan justice system run its course, expecting that the ridiculous accusations against their senior churchmen would be seen to be baseless. That expectation was sadly dashed.

The Supreme Court has been dragging its feet on the case. Moreover, for a year the Supreme Council of magistrates has ignored complaints by the defendant’s lawyers regarding Judge Joao Antonio Francisco. The defense has filed on the judge’s crude bias and the fact that he had held on to the case file to prevent its timely review by the Supreme Court. Justice in Angola remains unjust.

 


The Hunter, Hunted: An Angolan General’s Hunting Lodge

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Angolans call the remote southeastern province of Kuando Kubango “the end of the world” (in Portuguese: “o fim do mundo”).  Bordering Zambia, Botswana and Namibia, it’s more than a thousand kilometres inland from their country’s capital and a byword for the poverty and destruction wrought by more than 30 years of civil war.

As its ruined roads, bridges and infrastructure remind us to this day, Kuando Kubango was a heavily-mined battleground; the heartland of the US-backed rebel UNITA movement, headquartered in Jamba.  

With the end of the civil war in 2002, the national government did set aside funds for rebuilding.  The so-called ‘Peace Dividend’ has allowed individuals to amass huge fortunes from Angola’s reconstruction but all these years later Kuando Kubango remains largely unreconstructed, in part because of the diversion of public funds into the pockets of corrupt officials during the Administration of former President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Information supplied to Maka Angola has supplied a new lead for investigators looking into the affairs of yet another of the high-ranking officials associated with the Dos Santos years, General Higino Carneiro.

General Carneiro, was appointed Governor of Kuando Kubango in 2012.  The state budget allocated the equivalent of some US $115 million from public funds specifically for the construction of clinics, schools and homes for public workers in the province.   The money was spent, but there is not much to show for it.  The specified clinics, schools and homes were not all built.  However, during his four-year term as Governor, General Carneiro did construct a fancy private hunting lodge in the province that cost many millions of dollars to create.   

From Socialist Freedom Fighter to the Rich List Top Ten

During decades of poorly-paid public service, somehow Francisco Higino Lopes Carneiro (to give him his full name) managed to build and take over hotels and business empire, becoming a multi-millionaire while still on active duty.  Like so many of his peers his rise to riches began when he joined the MPLA’s fight for independence, rising through the ranks of its military wing, the FAPLA, and proving his loyalty to President dos Santos.  

Angolan army commanders have always combined both military and political roles, since the days when the ruling party was a Soviet-backed liberation movement whose military wing required political commissars.  They remained on active service even when assigned to openly political jobs or to civilian government positions until their formal retirement from the military is gazetted. 

This was the case with General Carneiro.  Dos Santos rewarded his loyalty by placing him in positions from which he could reap handsome profits.  First as Governor of the province of Kwanza Sul (1999-2002), then as Minister of Public Works (2002-10) and latterly as Governor of Kuando Kubango (2012-2016) and Governor of the Province of Luanda (2016-2017). In between, he was appointed to both the central committee and politburo of the ruling MPLA and elected to Angola’s parliament, the National Assembly.

There is no doubt that Angolan Generals were encouraged by their larcenous commander-in-chief to defy conflict of interest laws on public probity and pursue private commercial activities, only made possible by the positions to which he appointed them.  

This was the reward system employed by President José Eduardo dos Santos both to guarantee the ongoing loyalty of the politico-military hierarchy and also to make his comrades and associates complicit in the state-sponsored theft of the country’s oil wealth for their own benefit.

Only a few years ago, Higino Carneiro’s personal fortune was estimated as the fourth largest in Angola (the President and his daughter held the first two positions).  In achieving this Carneiro acted no differently from his peers in the Dos Santos Administration. After decades of self-sacrifice on the front line they saw no moral quandary in accepting the opportunity to be handsomely rewarded, all with their President’s connivance and blessing.

But the winds of fortune changed when Dos Santos was replaced in September 2017 by João Lourenço as President.  Lourenço vowed to tackle the endemic corruption that had given his country an infamous global reputation as a kleptocracy.  Initially, only small fry were swept up and prosecuted.  But when one of Dos Santos’s sons was arrested on charges of embezzlement, fraud and money-laundering, it became clear the game was up.

Allegations of maladministration of hundreds of millions of US dollars in funds during his term as Public Works Minister saw General Carneiro sacked as Governor of Luanda and suffering the indignity of a formal investigation.  So far, he has not been charged – but new evidence of the diversion of funds during his time as Governor of Kuando Kubango may change that.

The Kuando Kubango Scam

The directors of a Namibian construction company say they were duped by General Carneiro into building his private hunting lodge for which they can show evidence that he used state funds earmarked for public works.

They say the General obscured his own part in the scam by using intermediaries. This was standard operating procedure by officials in the Dos Santos years, to circumvent the Law on Public Probity which expressly prohibited public servants from such conflicts of interest.   “Mr Big”, the politically-exposed person, remains in the shadows so that only the straw men and patsies get swept up by police if things go wrong.  

Beacon Global Namibia (BGN) say that General Carneiro used deputy governor Joaquim Duma Malichi to issue a tender for 11 proposed public works in Kuando Kubango to a company named Beacon Global Angola (BGA) in February 2013.

This was strange as BGA did not yet exist.  It was only set up up two months later.  Even its parent company BGN didn’t yet exist.  It was formally registered three days after the date on which Malichi officially issued the tender.

According to Angola’s official gazette, the Diário da República, the founders of Beacon Global Angola were Alicerces José Cachala and Rosário Fernando Neves Tunda.  Both were low-level provincial functionaries with no business experience.

Cachala was the official driver for the lowly-paid municipal administrator of Rivungo, Júlio Vidigal. Neves Tunda was also a provincial employee.  Neither would have any role in BGA other than to lend their names to cover the identity of the real owner.   Even though Vidigal used their names as the ostensible partners on the Angolan side, it was his signature on the contract with the Namibian parent company BGN and his signature on the BGA bank account into which provincial government’s funds were deposited and unaccountably withdrawn.

Duped and Unpaid

In extensive face-to-face interviews in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, BGN’s partners and directors laid out the evidence to Maka Angola.   BGN director Estêvão Feliciano da Cruz told Maka Angola they discovered the BGA partners were ‘straw men’.  “Both these individuals were trusted employees who worked for Administrator Vidigal in Rivungo (…)   He [Vidigal] was the person who really set up the company (on behalf of General Carneiro) and they [Cachala and Neves Tunda] were the straw men.

There was no attempt at opening the tender to public competition.  General Carneiro, in his capacity as Kuando Kubango Governor, made the decision unilaterally and apparently jumped the gun when he got his deputy governor to offer contracts worth the equivalent of US $21 million to BGA two months before its corporate existence.  The only explanation is that he knew plans were afoot to create this company as a vehicle to divert public works monies.

The public works were to include a 70-bed clinic, costing seven million US dollars, in Jamba, once the legendary general headquarters of UNITA but nowadays the county seat of the Comuna (district) of Luiana. 

Documentary evidence shows this was one of the works awarded to BGA and that the provincial government paid nearly 700 million Kwanzas (US $7 million) to BGA “for the purchase of equipment and start of works”.  

BGN’s Estêvão da Cruz says: “at the Governor’s request, 145 million Kwanzas [of that 700 million Kwanza down-payment] was diverted towards the construction of a 30-bedroom hunting lodge in an area named Bico de Angola”. 

Another of the BGN partners, Ramos Talaya, told Maka Angola: “General Higino Carneiro personally asked Walter Pinto [a BGN partner appointed as Director-General of BGA) to use the public money to prioritize work on the lodge and that he [the General] would personally reimburse the government project afterwards.”  Why did BGA comply?   “You couldn’t say no to the Governor unless you wanted to lose the other contracts and create problems with the Angolan authorities”. 

Curiously, the original signed contracts for the 11 projects went missing at the Governor’s office.   According to Estêvão da Cruz, “The Governor’s office asked us to hand over the original contracts to Dr. Lena as part of the Planning Department’s approval process (homologation). They failed to return the original papers to us.”

General Carneiro brought a delegation, including family members, to inspect progress on the lodge in 2014.  During that visit, “We pressed him both for overdue payments and for the reimbursement of the public works monies. He told us that we should first finish the work, and only then would we get the money.”

The final cost for the works by BGA to complete the lodge was $2.2 million USD and BGN says the governor reneged on the payment.

BGN says the paper trail suggests General Carneiro contributed only one payment, a mere US $160,000, from his own account to the US $2.2 million total construction cost of the lodge. 

BGN is still waiting for the remaining balance of payment for the work done. 

Another of the partners, David Daniel, told us that when the lodge was completed and with only minor finishing remaining, “General Carneiro threw us (BGA) off the project, failing to pay us or reimburse the state for the public monies.”

Not far from the lodge in Bico de Angola is a half-built eight-room school and the footings for what should have been six homes for the police.  Work on these stopped when the money dried up.

BGA was also given a US  $4.5 million USD contract to build 100 homes in the nearby municipality of Calai.  “We had four homes built and roofed, and the foundations dug for another 15.  The provincial government failed to make the first payment so work had to be abandoned,” says Ramos Talaya.

David Daniel admits BGN was suspicious when their Angolan subsidiary was the only company offered the contract, without public tender, and that their concerns mounted when they saw Júlio Vidigal’s signature on BGA’s bank account with power of attorney to withdraw funds at will.

“We were told that no-one gets a contract to do work in Angola without it being part of some ‘scheme’.  I found the whole thing very suspect.  We tried to persuade the Governor and his deputy to take Júlio Vidigal out of the picture, but they only removed him when BGA went under.”

What Did BGA Deliver?

Officially, BGA completed only two of the contracts awarded by General Carneiro:  the clearing of a 50-kilometer stretch of terrain for a road between the town of Jamba and the frontier post of Buabuata; and the outfitting of the Buabuata border police post.  These two projects were worth 382.7 million Kwanzas (US $795,000).

Back in Namibia, the BGN directors and partners say they also delivered 22 T3 classification dwellings, completed save for installing the solar panels designed to provide electricity for them.  The initial contract was for 55 of these homes but the provincial government reduced the number to 25, claiming a budget shortfall.

BGN says they were 90% of the way to completing one eight-room school and 60% done on a second 12-room school in Jamba.   All that was left to do on the first project was install the solar electrification panel and assemble the water main pipe into the trench that had already been dug.  

As David Daniel points out, “the public monies wasted on the lodge could have built another two or three schools”.   Seventeen years after the ‘peace dividend’ an estimated two million children in Angola are still denied an education due to the lack of schools.

The unfinished school in Jamba

Maka Angola contacted the current provincial government of Kuando Kubango for their response to these allegations but they declined to comment, on the grounds that this is an active case.  According to Planning Department official Manuel Filipe, “We cannot say anything as the case is under judicial secrecy; we are limited from giving out any more information.  We have to wait for the judicial outcome and then we hope to have more information.”

Arrest Warrants for BGN Partners

BGN say General Carneiro was the mastermind of the scam.  They accuse him of using Vidigal to conceal his ownership and of illegally and unprofessionally awarding misleading contracts for his own benefit.  They say the unexplained BGA account withdrawals and unaccounted payments were fraudulent diversions of public monies to pay off the intermediaries and finance his private hunting lodge while creating convenient scapegoats.

But the investigation so far has focused on those scapegoats.  The BGA Director-General, Walter Pinto, has been made the fall-guy, arrested and remanded in custody since September 2018. Twice he has been named in the Angolan state media as the ringleader in the diversion of the Kuando Kubango public funds and the failure to complete the works.  He faces charges of abuse of trust and fraud over the failure by BGA to complete the public work contracts.

As soon as Pinto was arrested, a spokesman for the Criminal Investigation Service, Paulo Dias de Novais, told the state daily newspaper Jornal de Angola “that the ‘Beacon’ proprietor was unable to offer any information regarding the whereabouts of the money received from the Angolan State via the provincial government of Kuando Kubango.” 

Two months later, on November 22, the Angolan authorities officially requested Namibia’s Ministry of Safety and Security issue an arrest warrant for David Daniel and Ramos Talaya and their fellow partners in BGN:  Araújo Muachinoque, Estêvão Muachinoque, Paulus Hango, and Thulungeni Pohamba (son of Namibia’s former President). 

Araújo Muachinoque says the Angolan request was the result of false, bad-faith information from the provincial government.  “The work we undertook far exceeded the value of what was paid.” 

The Namibian partners say they are drowning in debt owed to workers and suppliers because the Kuando Kubango provincial government failed to pay what was owed.  They blame the Angolans for deliberately creating confusion to muddy the money trail:  “Walter Pinto had to give Vidigal power of attorney as a signatory on the BGA account and Vidigal repeatedly made unauthorized withdrawals.”

Maka Angola was able to inspect bank statements that support this:  we saw eight successive transfers of 16.8 million Kwanzas made by Administrator Vidigal to two other ‘ghost companies’: Bervim Lda. e Ezimoy Lda.   

Araújo Muachinoque was in charge of overseeing the BGA projects in Angola for BGN.  He says that the ‘evidence’ for the arrest warrants referred to works that had nothing to do with BGA: “The provincial government cited a contract for the equivalent of a million US dollars to supply electricity to the village of Tukuve in Menongue district, on the pretext that this was one of the works specified in the contract with BGA.  But we had never received a contract for that project and knew absolutely nothing about it.”

The Namibians are staggered that the Angolan investigating authorities have so far failed to look into who really owned BGA and the destination of the unauthorized withdrawals from BGA’s bank accounts.  They say it’s inconceivable that the investigators would not be able to make the connection between the monies destined for public works and the construction of General Carneiro’s lodge.

Maka Angola’s legal specialist, Rui Verde, says the evidence supplied by BGN points to both Higino Carneiro and Júlio Vidigal having repeatedly broken the anti-corruption laws and the issuing of contracts for public works.   He says: “Peculation and misappropriation of public funds are both administrative and public finance felonies, not to mention an abuse of power.”

General Carneiro thought he could get away scot free.  Even amid the mounting evidence against him, he believed he was well shielded by parliamentary immunity, the protection of his erstwhile benefactor and the threat that if he were arrested, he would bring down those above him.  

The hunting lodge may prove his downfall. 

Only in Angola: Fraudster’s Bank Gets Bail-Out

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The notorious Angolan-Swiss fraudster, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais,  was remanded in custody in Angola last September to await trial on charges of embezzling billions of dollars from the country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.   

So why are the Angolan authorities allowing him to continue as the majority owner and head of the Banco Kwanza Investimentos, S.A.?  And what on earth persuaded the Governor of Angola’s central bank to bail out Bastos de Morais’s failing ‘investment’ bank?   

FLOUTING THE RULES

Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais (JCBM) registered the BKI (initially under the name of Banco Kwanza Invest, S.A.) with himself as the majority owner with 85% of the stock and the remaining 15% registered in the name of Sérgio Ferreira Mata da Costa. 

This was a ruse to hide the real owner, the former BKI Chairman of the Board and Swiss national, Marcel Kruse, presumably to comply with a requirement for an Angolan partner.

Marcel Kruse explained the sleight of hand to Maka Angola: “At the time the bank was founded, I was to be rewarded for my work in setting it up with 15% of the stock.  However, they [Jean-Claude and his close friend José Filomeno dos Santos, a son of the former Angolan President] told me that the shares could not be registered in my name.  So I nominated Sérgio, who is a relation.” 

To ensure that he would not be cheated, Marcel Kruse had Sérgio, an electrician, sign both an irrevocable power of attorney and a promissory note in his favour.  Although he has never taken any part in the BKI, Sérgio continues to be registered as the legal owner of 15% of the BKI stock to this day.   

“No-one was willing to help me regularize this situation, not even the bank”, he told Maka Angola. “I repeatedly asked for the situation to be legalized, without success.  I even offered to sell my shareholding – but the majority shareholder ([Jean-Claude] blocked it and said I could not sell to any third party.  This has left me trapped in a stupid situation that I’ve wanted to escape for some considerable time”.

Although he says he’s received no dividends on his 15% of the stock since the bank was set up in 2008,  Marcel Kruse remains a non-executive director of BKI and takes part in board meetings six times a year although he complains that he is not kept well informed:

“I rarely receive the paperwork for these meetings, though sometimes I do get a balance sheet.  There is very little information made available.  The Chairman of the Board and the two executive administrators kept everything close to their chests.”

Kruse says that after Bastos de Morais was charged and remanded in custody, one of the three Board members, another Swiss national named Gerard Bessier, promptly returned to Switzerland, from where he sent a letter of resignation in December.   That left just two Board executive administrators in charge:  Adriano de Carvalho Júnior and Sandro Celso de Morais Miguel.

Last month the Angolan National Bank Governor, José de Lima Massano, sanctioned a five billion Kwanza bail-out for BKI, allowing the bank to re-capitalise using its own reserves and liquidity. Thus, JCBM transferred 4.8% of his shares to Adriano de Carvalho Júnior, who appears in the documentation as the BKI Board Chairman, even there is no record of the transaction in the BKI board minutes.

The bank’s only other partner, Marcel Kruse, expressed his absolute incredulity at this turn of events.  “No-one knows how or why Adriano suddenly ended up with nearly 5% of the bank.  Did this happen?  I had no idea.”

Adriano de Carvalho Jr. told Maka Angola he obtained the 4.8% of BKI stock as “part of his remunerative package from Bastos de Morais”.  He said the stock transfer was “openly registered, and communicated and authorized by the BNA, in compliance with the regulations”. 

However this was not exactly a straighforward purchase.  De Carvalho Jr. admitted that the stock from JCBM was an “advance against the ‘executive bonus’ he was promised for his work over the next three financial reporting periods”. 

Meanwhile, Kruse says:  “I attended the last General Meeting, via Skype, when we agreed to seek to integrate the reserves to increase the bank’s capital”. “To do so, it was necessary to undergo an audit and one was conducted by Deloitte (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. – the multinational professional services firm).  I did not receive a copy of their report even though I’m still a non-executive board member and administrator.”

It is illegal for the BKI to withhold such information from a shareholder and to prevent an administrator from carrying out his duties. Under Angolan law, notification of such an anomaly should trigger an investigation by the relevant judicial authorities and lead to the suspension (and eventual dismissal, if proven) of the person responsible.

The BKI also had a duty to report the audit to the central bank.  Was full and accurate information submitted?  In the absence of verifiable proof of the existence of the BKI’s reserves, it would have been unconscionable for José de Lima Massano to authorise a recapitalisation.

Questioned by Maka Angola, Adriano de Carvalho Júnior said that as Chairman, he received and read the Deloitte report and that it confirmed the existence of capital reserves and results in transit which he said “taken together is sufficient and is in conformity with the legal requirements”.

Maka Angola’s legal analyst, Rui Verde, gave his analysis of Marcel Kruse’s concerns: “The truth is that we are talking about a fait accompli (the integration of the reserves into the bank’s operating capital).   Was the audit accurate and comprehensive?  It’s entirely possible that the organisation could have falsified the result… Perhaps the reserves don’t actually exist, or perhaps they were already used.  Just because they are registered on the balance sheet doesn’t mean they actually exist.” He cautions: “Where are these reserves actually kept?  In bank deposits?  In share certificates?  Outside of the bank’s physical location?  In theory, the financial reserves may exist only on paper.”

A BANK WITHOUT ANY OTHER CLIENTS?

There is a second worrying element to consider:  Marcel Kruse says that the BKI’s clients are almost exclusively made up of Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais’s own companies and that ‘JCBM’ had ordered the bank not to engage other customers.  The implication is that the BKI is yet another of those institutions set up by what we have come to call the ‘Dos Santos Cartel’ – family members and associates of the former Angolan President, José Eduardo dos Santos – to divert public funds to their own ends.

The BKI is an investment bank which does not itself make loans.  It simply acts as a mediator, offering its professional financial services to entrepreneurs seeking start-up capital.  The actual funds come from the Angolan treasury.

So, when one of the original BKI administrators reveals that the BKI’s clients are mostly (or exclusively) companies set up by the BKI’s majority shareholder, Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais, this is not just a flagrant conflict of interest.  It arouses suspicion that the investment bank is merely a front for diverting Angolan public funds to JCBM and/or his associates.  In short, the BKI stands accused of facilitating the embezzlement of public monies and money laundering.

These accusations are not new.  Maka Angola has repeatedly reported whistleblower accounts of the dodgy dealings at the BKI, such as the transfer on January 22nd, 2015,  of 100 million US dollars from Angola’s Sovereign Fund (under the aegis of José Filomeno dos Santos, the former President’s son and JCBM’s personal friend and business partner) to a shell company named ‘Kijinga, S.A’

Ten days later, on February 3rd that year,  Kijinga S.A., transferred the entire US $100 million to two other ‘phantom’ companies: US $88 million to Ulussu S.A. and the remaining US $12 million to Kabasa S.A.

As we reported at the time, all three companies, Kijinga S.A, Ulussu e Kabasa S.A.  had all been set up on the same day, on December 4th, 2012, and all were registered at the same address: at Banco Kwanza Invest, 150 Avenida Comandante Gika, Luanda.

In response, José Filomeno dos Santos, the head of the Sovereign Fund (in Portuguese, Fundo Soberano de Angola, FSDEA), clarified that Kijinga S.A was an FSDEA enterprise.  He had no idea that Maka Angola had obtained evidence of the subsequent onward transfers made by his friend Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais to his own phantom companies, Ulussu  and Kabasa.

Add to those US $100 million, a further US $180 million that the FSDEA paid to another of JCBM’s companies, Caioporto S.A., (as gazetted on January 30, 2017). This was yet another phantom company set up by Jean-Claude, ostensibly the company awarded the contract to build a gigantic state project a free port.   JCBM registered Caioporto S.A.  on October 16, 2011 listing himself as the owner of 99.9% of the stock, based at the BKI address.

It defies belief that the Sovereign Fund was handing over US $180 million to obtain 50% of the stock of Caioporto, a shell company with no employees and with zero experience of building or operating a port, but which nonetheless was awarded the concession for the future Porto de Caio in Cabinda by the Sovereign Fund chief’s father, the former President, José Eduardo dos Santos.

Under the Dos Santos administration, state contracts and money flowed freely into the BKI.   Take Presidential Decree No 25 of 2017, which awarded  another of JCBM’s BKI-registered shell companies, Vavita Power, S.A., a contract worth more than US $200 million to “build, operate and transmit power from a 100 Megawatt Thermo-Electric Dual-Power Station in Cabinda”.

Every one of these deals is suspect.  Each one bears all the signs of embezzlement and money laundering by Politically-Exposed Persons who are, as we write, in custody and facing trial on charges of numerous financial crimes.   And the BKI was instrumental in facilitating the diversion and laundering of hundreds of millions of US dollars.

Surely at some point the auditors should have figured out what was going on?  The BKI’s own annual reports showed, e.g. that in 2015 and 2016 it made no loans, simply recording “advances to depositors”.  What else did it do?  Nothing, apparently.  The BKI apparently was surviving only thanks to the nominal value of call deposit accounts, real estate title and its foreign exchange operations. 

As for the BKI’s liquid capital, 25% of the monies deposited with it come from the Angolan Risk Capital Fund (Fundo Activo de Capital de Risco Angolano, FACRA) ­­– the state body set up by Dos Santos which of all the banks available, chose BKI as the repository for its funds, which also came from the Angolan Treasury.   And who did Dos Santos appoint to manage FACRA?  Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais.  The record shows that the BKI invested the FACRA funds in its own subordinated bank bonds, which on maturity were transferred into a call deposit account, but with zero interest!

When asked why the BKI has no other clients than Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais and his companies, De Carvalho Jr. sidestepped and declined to comment, citing the code of secrecy amongst banks not to divulge the identity of their clients.   Instead he emphasised that “all banking activity in Angola is supervised and regulated by the Supervisory Organs to ensure they comply with the current norms and legislation”. 

The Banco Nacional de Angola recently hit the headlines for having suspended the licences of two banks linked to the Dos Santos family: the Banco Postal, headed by Danilo dos Santos, and the Banco Mais, a subsidiary of the Financial Mais group used by José Filomeno dos Santos e another of his business partners, Jorge Pontes, to steal 500 million US dollars from the BNA.  

Frankly, it’s a mystery as to why the BNA didn’t close down a third bank, the BKI, over its repeated frauds.  It must be as plain to the Governor as it is to the rest of the world that the BKI’s sole activity was as a money-laundering vehicle for José Filomeno dos Santosand Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais who brazenly diverted public funds to their own companies with the knowledge and complicity of the former President.   

Maka Angola asked Adriano de Carvalho Jr. how the existence can be justified of a bank whose only activity is to launder money for a notorious fraudster?  

This is his response in full: 

“The Bank categorically rejects that description of its activity and repeats that it is carefully monitored by the relevant authorities, namely, the Banco Nacional de Angola and the Financial Information Unit, who share the responsibility of ensuring that the operations of every financial institution operating in Angola are in compliance with the rules concerning money-laundering and the financing of terrorism, in accordance with the specific norms and procedures which all operators of the Angolan financial system, without exception, are obliged to respect and which the BKI has also adopted and scrupulously complies with.”

An Anguished Cry for Justice in Angola

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The family of a man tortured to death by Angolan police have petitioned President João Lourenço for justice.  As reported by Maka Angola, João Alfredo Dala was beaten and mutilated during a 15-hour police interrogation as part of an investigation into the alleged kidnapping of an elderly pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Angola.  

Evidence supplied to Maka Angola suggested that the pastor in question, Daniel Cem, had staged his own kidnapping as a form of revenge on the Church hierarchy after being sacked from his administrative role and losing his status and privileges.  

Pastor Cem told officers investigating the case that the kidnappers bundled him into a truck he recognized as belonging to a member of his congregation, João Dala.    

Mr Dala was taken in for questioning and a number of the officers from Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service (Serviço de Investigação Criminal – SIC) recorded the interrogation on their cellphones and in video – one of the recordings that was passed around fellow officers before being leaked. It was evidence of torture.

João Dala died on September 1, 2018 as a result of the extensive injuries he sustained while in custody, according to his post-mortem.  He had been banned from traveling abroad to seek proper medical care, which had been denied to him at home. Yet, he had survived long enough to bear witness as to how he sustained those injuries and to name the men responsible.

The gruesome images in the leaked recording corroborated Mr Dala’s testimony. Yet, the officers accused of torture were not suspended, nor investigated.  Later, some were even promoted.  

Numerous witnesses can testify that João Dala was out of town on the day of the alleged kidnapping, using his pick-up truck to trade goods across Angola’s northern border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Named police officers stand accused of scapegoating  an innocent man, forcing a false confession through such extreme torture that eventually led to his death.

In the face of official inaction, his grieving family has published an open letter to the Angolan President to ask for his intervention to ensure Mr Dala’s death is properly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

João Dala under torture, photographed by the torturers themselves.

Their petition, translated into English, follows: 

We can barely mouth the words. Suffering makes them stick in our throats.  We lose our voice when we think back to the profound injustice suffered by João Dala, our son, brother, and friend. 

His death was murder, brutal murder at the hands of senior members of the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC).  His death left us too weakened to sit at the door of Your Excellency’s Palace to call for justice.  But we are not so weakened as to be unable to write to you, to express our profound sorrow over what happened then, is happening now and should never happen again.

This is the minimum we can do in João Dala’s memory: to recall it, to speak out without fear about an ongoing situation that is continuing to happen in our country, and to strive for a different future.

João Dala died on September 1, 2018 as a consequence of the injuries he received during 15 consecutive hours of torture at the hands of senior police officers (in December 2015). 

Your Excellency, you know these men.  You promoted them in April 2018.  We are certain of one thing: there cannot be justice for João Dala while this country’s police and security forces are led by individuals who have no compunction in ordering and committing acts of torture.  These are individuals who appear to take a sadistic pleasure in torturing their fellow human beings.

We hereby accuse Fernando Manuel Bambi Receado and Lourenço Ngola Kina as the perpetrators of the acts of extreme violence which led eventually to the tragically early death of João Dala.   We name these men as murderers, by acts of commission or omission.

Yet, in spite of their being responsible for the tragic killing of an Angolan citizen, you promoted Bambi Receado to the rank of Commissioner and Ngola Kina to the rank of Assistant Commissioner and provincial director of the SIC for the province of Uige.

We must ask: in a State of Law, how is this even possible?

Excellency:

Even as we witness these murderers receive career advancement, we are perplexed to confirm that there is no investigation, inquiry or any relevant action in connection with the denunciation of police torture that led to João Dala’s death. The only consequence (to date) of this agonizing and unnecessary death was the premature and heartrending funeral of their victim.

Promoting these men appears to reward them for murder and it is unbearable that this should be actioned by the very man who carries all this country’s hopes for its respect for justice and the fundamental human rights of its citizens. This is why we feel obliged to address an open letter to you:  so that our appeal for justice for João Dala cannot be ignored and to prevent any repetition of such tragedies in our homeland.

Justice demands an exhaustive investigation into João Dala’s death.  Justice must identify those who perpetrated the acts which led to his death.  Justice requires criminals to be penalized.

Angola cannot continue to be a home for the arrogance of those who advocate methods of illegal violence, and must not become by a byword for torturers.  It will take great decisions to ensure that Angola is on the road to becoming a more just society, even if it takes small steps and small measures along the way.

The Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) ought to stand as a guarantor of order and peace of mind for Angolans, not as a hive of disresepct, torture and death.

Excellency,

This family had one of its most loved sons torn away and remains under a cloud of perpetual sorrow.  All we ask of you is decisive action in the name of justice, which would bring  some closure to our agony.

We ask for your vigorous intervention, not just to alleviate some of this family’s pain, but to bring justice to Angola and ensure that no-one is above the law, that anyone who violates the legality and dignity of the human condition, whether they are SIC officers or not, will face consequences.

We may never cease to mourn and lament the loss of our loved one, but the knowledge that he received justice would be some consolation.

Signed in Malanje on February 11, 2019.

  1. Helena Monteiro Ndala – Mother
  • Luzia José Sola – Widow
  • Deolinda Luís Dala – Daughter
  • Jeremias João Luís Dala – Son
  • Solade Luzia João Dala – Son
  • Ana Alfredo Dala – Sister
  • Anita Alfredo Dala – Sister
  • Barroso Alfredo Dala – Brother
  • Domingas Alfredo Dala – Sister
  1. Linda Alfredo Dala – Sister
  1. Ana Monteiro – Aunt
  1. Domingos Luís Njila – Uncle
  1. Sebastião Salvador – Uncle
  1. Teresa Muondo – Aunt
  1. Adão de Oliveira Ndombo – Cousin
  1. António da Silva – Cousin
  1. Barroso Sebastião Dala Salvador – Cousin
  1. Bela Manuel Gonga – Cousin
  1. Conceição Monteiro Massango – Cousin
  • Domingas Correia Mussungo – Cousin
  • Fernando Serrote Gonga – Cousin
  • Guilhermina Manuel Gonga Santos – Cousin
  • Linda Sebastião Dala Salvador – Cousin
  • Maria Monteiro Mussungo – Cousin
  • Zacarias Luís Santos – Cousin
  • Afonso Garcia Soares – Nephew
  • Ageu Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew
  • Amilton Gonga Soares – Nephew
  • Analdete Monteiro Ndombo – Niece
  • António Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew
  • Arménia Joaquina Dala Zua – Niece
  • Armindo José Mussungo Paciência – Nephew
  • Bento Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew
  • Bernardeth Gonga Soares – Niece
  • Bernabé Dala Zua – Nephew
  • Branca Gonga Soares – Niece
  • Cesaltina Mussungo de Oliveira – Niece
  • Domingos Manuel Gonga – Nephew
  • Eduardo Alfredo Dala – Nephew
  • Esperança João Alfredo Dala – Niece
  • Ezídio Adão de Oliveira – Nephew
  • Helena Patrícia Zua Dala
  • Jecelina Adriano Monteiro Fernando – Nephew
  • Letícia Monteiro de Oliveira – Niece
  • Manuel Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew
  • Marcela Monteiro Dala – Niece
  • Marco Garcia Soares – Nephew
  • Maria Mussungo Paciência – Niece
  • Mário Adriano Monteiro Sobrinho Fernando – Nephew
  • Marinela Dombo de Oliveira – Niece
  • Matundu Alfredo Yenge – Nephew
  • Miguel Pedro Gonga – Nephew
  • Pedro Mondu Gonga – Nephew
  • Pedro Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew
  • Suzana Monteiro Dala – Niece
  • Teresa Gonga dos Santos – Niece
  • Valente Pacheco Monteiro Dala – Nephew
  • Zacarias Gonga dos Santos – Nephew

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They called me crazy!

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They called me crazy! They also branded me “frustrated”, “anti-patriotic”, “a CIA agent”, “a sell-out”, and “a traitor”.

I endured endless political harassment and countless run-ins with the police.

I had to cope with smear campaigns, economic deprivation and social isolation.

I was put on trial for exposing their human rights abuse and corruption.

Who are “they”?  “They” are the members of the Dos Santos Administration:  the individuals who were the beneficiaries of, and accomplices in, then-President José Eduardo dos Santos’s regime.  They’re the ones who embodied the institutionalized corruption and the state capture of the economy, the repression and the fear that pervaded Angola during the 38 years Dos Santos held power.

Then in September 2017, Dos Santos’s chosen successor João Lourenço was elected President and decided that the stench of corruption was too much to bear. The result is that a number of high-profile and high-ranking malcreants within his own ruling MPLA, are finally being held accountable after decades of plundering the country with impunity .  Dos Santos’ own son has been sitting in jail for the past six months for plundering billions of dollars from the country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.

The MPLA has been Angola’s only ruling party since independence in 1975.

Ironically, those who want to smear, attack or deride me for continuing to hold my ground against corruption, now call me “the president’s friend”.

Before I explain why, I should say how mindful I am that the Oslo Freedom Forum is an inspirational space made up of dissidents. But this time, I have not come as a dissident, to share a story of a regime harassing, attacking or persecuting me.

Instead, I am here to share hope, to talk about a window of opportunity for change that can take place in a seemingly intractable African regime.

On December 4t last year, I had an hour-long meeting with President Lourenço. He started off by making a public apology – in full view of the media representatives gathered to record the moment – for an incident that had taken place the day before.  Along with other members of a civil society delegation, I had been invited to meet the President, only to find that his subordinates refused me entrance to the palace.  I was singled out, and excluded from honouring the President’s personal invitation to meet with him.

Somehow, I was still public enemy number one for some in the MPLA regime.  Many people were unhappy that the President had reached out to me and was willing to engage with me to address the issues of corruption and human rights abuse in the country.

Those who benefited under the previous regime are startled to see the President denouncing the greed of his own peers.  His party comrades had previously captured the state for themselves and thought they could control him and maintain the status quo.  Instead they have seen him act as an agent provocateur.

President Lourenço  encouraged me to continue my work of exposing corruption, and to file the relevant evidence with the Office of the Attorney General for formal investigation, and to continue to act as I have done in the past to help educate citizens about the rule of law and to rile up the corrupt. I came out of that meeting with the President with the only assurance I need to do an even better job. The state apparatus will let me be.

Rafael Marques and Presidente João Lourenço at the meeting in December 5

This time, my friends here at the Oslo Freedom Forum can’t rib me for always being on trial, as has happened during the past three of its events I attended.

Just a few days ago, I helped a grieving family deliver a letter to the Office of the President, to call him out for having promoted two men denounced as torturers to senior ranks and positions in the Criminal Investigation Service.  In December 2015, these two men personally took part in the torture of an Angolan citizen named João Alfredo Dala. During a brutal interrogation that went on for fifteen hours straight, they even mutilated his genitals. Mr Dala died later as a direct result of the injuries received according to an autopsy. 

I had already brought up this issue with the President. He told me that he had not received any briefing suggesting such behaviour by the men prior to his decision, nor had any members of the Council on Defense and Security expressed any reservation about their eligibility for promotion.

The President’s chief of staff met with Mr Dala’s grieving family and personally received the letter. And, when those family members told him they intended to make their letter public, he encouraged them to do so, and has promised there will be a prompt official response.

Well, in 2017 when I published a report – Angola’s Killing Fields:  A Report on Extrajudicial Executions in Luanda 2016-17 on systemic extra-judicial killings carried out by operatives from the Criminal Investigation Service, President Lourenço ordered the setting up of a commission of enquiry. I had the task of organizing the space for the commission to hear the survivors, witnesses and relatives, whose presence I had to arrange at personal cost.

It was a significant step forward.  But I am still waiting for any official outcome and I am becoming impatient.

For too long, the Dos Santos regime, as with many other kleptocracies, thrived on the strategy of divide-and-rule.  A corrupt cabal united around the President were complicit in enriching themselves and abusing their power to instil fear in the populace at large. Many of these throwbacks to the ancient regime are now trying to muster support within the ruling party to resist President Lourenço’s anti-corruption effort.

There is a common refrain:  that no one, not even the current President himself, has clean hands to judge anyone.

Some don’t believe the President’s fight against corruption is genuine.

Others resort to attempted blackmail, arguing that their actions were at the behest of, and for the benefit of, the ruling party: that their misappropriation of public funds was so the MPLA could win – that is to say, rig – elections.

And those high-ranking MPLA members being lined up for questioning regarding their own criminal deeds, who previously ignored the suffering of others in a skewed justice system, have suddenly become the fiercest advocates of the rule of law.

Too many worry that going ahead with the prosecution of senior figures will have dire consequences for the governing party – and for the country.

The bottom line is this:  they want things to stay the same. And they are dangerous.

I support the President’s anti-corruption agenda. It provides a platform to moralize society and bring the reign of impunity to an end. It is a good starting point for building a coalition for change in Angola, for a future beyond perpetual rule by the MPLA. But, as a concerned citizen, I am wary of the president’s Achilles’ heel: the economy.

For the fight against corruption to be successful in the long-term, the public administration must be reformed with two imperatives:

  • The first must be to establish a system of meritocracy as the effective way to root out cronyism, nepotism and criminal incompetence.
  • The second must be to adopt a holistic approach in tackling the moribund economy, in which almost every sector is still either controlled by the state or by current and former corrupt state officials, some of whom are currently under investigation.

I believe the president needs a radical agenda.  He could start by renewing his economic team to remove those who are either incompetent or who are wilfully maintaining the status quo. An economic plan that creates jobs and adjusts pay scales so that people can honestly believe that their standard of living will improve, is crucial to his eventual success. 

This fight for economic rights and justice must become the driving force for all of us, whether in government, opposition or civil society, if we are to meet and build bridges for real change.

*This is an edited version of the talk delivered at the Oslo Freedom Forum in Mexico City, on February 26, 2019.

Vincent Miclet’s Angolan (Mis)Adventures

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When Le Monde profiled the African-born businessman Vincent Miclet in November 2018, it called him the “Gatsby” of Francophone Africa. The inference was clear: opulence and decadence combined in a single name. Gatsby was the fatally-flawed eponymous character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, whose fabulous wealth was obtained through mysterious, possibly illegal, means and whose machinations led to his downfall.

Vincent Miclet (on the main foto) was presented as somewhat exotic: a slick, fifty-something millionaire playboy, born and educated at Baccalaureate level in Africa, his business acumen, in his own words, “self-taught”. In a self-serving interview with Le Monde, Miclet hoped to portray himself as a business genius cheated by Angola’s corrupt Generals. Publication ensured numerous commentators would take a closer look.

The French businessman did not respond the questionnaire sent to him for this text.

This is the first in a series of investigations by Maka Angola.

BUDDIES AND BRIBES

According to Liberation, Miclet owes his business success to a combination of showy connections and bribery (in French:  “Bling Bling et Bakchichs”). It was thanks to his French-African connections that Miclet expanded his business interests across Africa, launching him to number 180 on France’s rich list.

And, as Miclet himself told Le Monde, “In Africa, you can’t do business without paying commission (baksheesh).” And he proudly admitted that his personal commission on deals was 30%.

For 20 years Vincent Miclet had operated under the radar however, a relationship with a French reality TV celebrity in 2013 propelled him onto France’s gossip pages. They gleefully documented this divorcé’s life of luxurious excess during his four years with glamorous Ayem Nour, with whom he fathered a son. Pictures of the couple showed a man in his early-fifties with plumply unlined features, streaky blonde highlights, and a receding hairline.

After the split from Ayem Nour (which he publicly and unchivalrously blamed on his interfering mother-in-law, Farida), he sold their vast villa in the Dordogne for nearly 30 million euros. The sumptuous Moroccan palace he calls home is reputed to rival that of the country’s King. It’s where he played host to the notorious Alexandre Benalla, the former bodyguard to French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron, fired after he violently attacked the May 1st protesters.

According to Le Libre Penseur, Miclet’s French-African network was built on connections to the Masons and Corsican Mafiosi. Libération reported that Miclet hired Benalla as a bodyguard for the mother of his child and then engineered a new career for him via another friend, the veteran French-African business fixer Philippe Hababou Solomon. Miclet is also reported to have been the link between Benalla and Marc Francelet, another interesting Frenchman whose criminal record seems to have presented no obstacle to his security connections.

How did the son of non-profit volunteers become so rich and well-connected? Born in modest circumstances to French non-profit volunteers in Chad, Miclet portrays himself as a self-made business genius – but many suspected his good fortune can be attributed to modern-day buccaneering.

After his school days in Africa, Miclet set up his first company, Cash Distribution (a cargo transport company) in 1984. He was 19. Within five years he had entered the food supply business, expanding from dried fish to oil, tomatoes and rice – allegedly becoming the number one importer of rice to Congo.

His entry into Angola is said to have come about thanks to the Féliciaggi family connections (the Féliciaggis had connections to Congo, the Corsican mafia and the disgraced former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua).

According to Liberation,”It was the Corsican connection that led Miclet directly to Angola, where a General close to the President opened the doors to juicy business deals supplying contracts.”

By 1995, he was already reported as partnering with China to supply food and uniforms to the Angolan Armed Forces before diversifying into international logistics, and construction. He also went into a joint venture with the French company Necotrans to establish and operate a port terminal in the capital, Luanda. To which, he boasted was the largest refrigeration plant in Africa.

So what went wrong? Why was he forced to make a hasty exit from Angola amid complaints of undelivered goods and missing millions.

VICTIM OR VILLAIN?

In Le Monde, Vincent Miclet alleged he was the victim of a cabal of corrupt Angolan Generals. He painted himself as the king of imports into Angola, in partnership with then Minister of State and Presidential Security Chief, General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior ‘Kopelipa’.

He wasn’t lying. His pre-eminence in the import sector came about because the Angolan élite needed a straw man when they ousted the previous ‘king of imports, the Lebanese businessman, Kassim Tajideen.

Tajideen (currently serving a prison term in the USA) was the majority owner of the Arosfran Group of companies, (amongst them Afribelg, Golfrate and Muteba) which together imported US $50 million dollars worth of foodstuffs per month – US $600 million a year.

In 2011, President Dos Santos received intelligence that Tajideen was suspected of funding a terrorist organization. He summoned the Presidency’s Civilian and Military Chiefs of Staff (Carlos Feijó and General ‘Kopelipa’ respectively) to draw up a plan to buy out Kassim Tajideen and expel him from Angola.

Feijó and Kopelipa came up with a scheme to create a new company that they named ‘Nova Distribuidora Alimentar e Diversos, Lda.’ (NDAD) which aimed to buy out the entirety of the Arosfran Group assets in Angola (including 170 warehouses) for US $150 million. Another of President Dos Santos’s close associates, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, ‘Dino’, obtained a personal loan of US $150 million to this end from the Angolan Investment Bank (Banco Angolano de Investimento, BAI).

Faciliteis of NDAD

Several highly-placed sources told Maka Angola that Feijó and Kopelipa co-opted Vincent Miclet and and his secretary Adélia Bandeira El-Bichuti into lending their names to the company to mask the involvement of politically-exposed persons.

Miclet omits this element from his account. He says he negotiated directly with Kassim Tajideen’s lawyer, Rui Ferreira, for the buy-out. By 2011 Ferreira had left his legal practise on being appointed President of the Constitutional Court (today he is Supreme Court President).

Questioned by Maka Angola, Judge Ferreira justified his role, denying a conflict of interest (which would have been contrary to Angolan law): It’s true that I was across the sale of the Arosfran Group to NDAD in 2011 and that I had a semi-supervisory role in the process.”

“As is well known, I was a lawyer in private practice for 23 years, between 1985 and 2008,” Rui Ferreira continued. “And during that time, I was the legal consignor for a number of the companies in the Arosfran Group, including Golfrate and Afribelg, which belonged to Kassim Tajideen. Back then it was the largest organization in the field of food distribution in Angola, in particular for essentials”.

However, upon his appointment to the Constitutional Court, Rui Ferreira ceased to represent his previous clients.

However, when the Angolan President decided Kassim Tajideen had to be forced out of Angola, his Chiefs of Staff consulted Judge Ferreira, as he recalls: “They [Carlos Feijó and General Kopelipa] approached me to request my assistance on a matter of national interest. Because of the trust and respect I’d established with Tajideen over the many years of our previous professional relationship, they sought my help to persuade him to agree to an exit deal”.

“They argued that this was a delicate matter of exceptional national interest in that a quick agreement needed to be reached, without dispute, so as not to affect essential food supplies.”

Judge Ferreira’s former client, Kassim Tajideen, was suspicious that the Angolan government was trying to oust him without payment and the President’s envoys needed Ferreira to serve as an unofficial go-between, simply to reassure Tajideen that he would be fully compensated.

In these circumstances, says Rui Ferreira, “I agreed. Because it was a request from my country’s government which considered that I was uniquely placed to help them resolve this process, which was in the national interest.” He underlined that there was no remuneration or other benefit to him.

He justified his role as an act of patriotism and good citizenship.

“I did what I did.” “It was nothing more than an unpaid ‘good offices mission’ required of me by my country’s government in the national interest.”

“Both parties accepted that this was a ‘good offices mission’ and welcomed it. I did not act (in an official capacity as lawyer) for either party, but simply as a facilitator of the agreement.”

MICLET AND NDAD

The contract for the sale of all the Arosfran Group’s assets was signed on June 7, 2011 by Kassim Tajideen and Vincent Miclet, the latter signing in his capacity as a “partner and manager of NDAD”. Out of the US $150 million bank loan obtained by General Dino, two thirds, i.e. US $100 million, were paid directly to Kassim Tahjideen in September 2011 to compensate him for his expulsion from Angola. He is banned from returning for a period of 20 years.

As for the other third of the BAI loan, US $50 million, it simply vanished.

Rui Ferreira admits that he was kept in the dark on the finer points of the deal:

“Only some months later, after the fact, and without my being officially informed, did I hear on the grapevine who the real owners of NDAD were.” He names no names but sources have told Maka Angola that the real owners were Generals Kopelipa and Dino.

For his part Kopelipa’s erstwhile civilian colleague at the Office of the President categorically denies any involvement in NDAD. “The fact someone worked or held a senior position in the Office of the Presidency doesn’t mean they automatically enjoy illicit advantages of any kind, ” says Carlos Feijó.

Kopelipa

That was his only government role, from 2010 to 2012, after which he returned to the private sector and academic life. He’s currently a tenured Professor of Law at Agostinho Neto University.

Feijó confirmed to Maka Angola that the expulsion of Tajideen and compulsory purchase of the Arosfran Group were the result of a United Nations subpoena received by the Foreign Ministry of Angola regarding Tajideen’s links to Hezbollah.

“I immediately advised (the President) that we must comply without hesitation. My understanding, from the constitutional and legal point of view, was that the Angolan State could not directly intervene and confiscate (the business) as we have no law providing for confiscation of assets unless there has been a guilty verdict in a court of law”.

“At the same time”, says Feijó, we had to be cognizant of the fact that the Arosfran Group was the main operator in the import and sale of the vast majority of foodstuffs, in particular what we refer to as the “essential basket of goods”, and that any action taken against Arosfran could have a grave impact on the inflation rate which we were at pains to control.”

For these reasons it was believed that the best solution would be to find a private Angolan-owned company to acquire the real estate and assets of the commercial companies in the Arosfran Group.

According to Carlos Feijó, “As General Dino led Kero [a supermarket chain] and had knowledge and experience of the market, he was charged with finding a financial solution, which involved taking out a loan from the BAI.” “Dino arranged the BAI financing. I was not part of what followed. The rest is a private matter which had nothing to do with me.”

“All I know is that, from a business point of view, there was a decision to set up an Angolan commercial company and use that for the subsequent acquisition of the Arosfran Group”, explains Feijó. “There was a legitimate contract of sale and purchase of the Arosfran Group’s real estate and assets”, he adds.

Why Vincent Miclet? Because General Kopelipa already knew him from his role as a conduit for Chinese supplies to the Angolan military. Feijó says it was because they already had a business relationship that M. Miclet was chosen to act as head of the Arosfran Group.

To the best of his recollection, Vincent Miclet and his secretary Adélia Bichuti drew up the inventory and valuation of the Arosfram Group based on consultations with Rui Ferreira who had worked with the Arosfran Group: “To clarify, I mean Rui Ferreira’s private law firm, because I must emphasize that I have no knowledge of whether he was still a partner in that law firm.”

However, once other lawyers took over to draw up the agreement documentation, he says neither he nor General Kopelipa and Dino played any further part in the negotiations. “I must emphasize that I did not see either of the Generals (Kopelipa and Dino) involved in the negotiations. I would say that General Dino’s role was only to arrange the financing.”

Once there was agreement for the sale of the Arosfran Group, the Interior Minister drew up the order to expel Kassim Tajideen from Angola and ban his return. Kassim Tajideen was subsequently found guilty of money-laundering and funding Hezbollah and was ordered to pay a US $50 million fine. He is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in the United States of America.

Some months later, President Dos Santos replaced Carlos Feijó and by 2013 he had returned to his private legal practice and took no further part in public life.

His subsequent role was in his capacity as head of a private law firm after he was contacted to “try to resolve a situation in which NDAD was in technical bankruptcy, without the wherewithal to pay off the contracted loan.” From 2013, Feijó’s legal firm supplied a lawyer on monthly retainer to NDAD.

Documents received by Maka Angola show that NDAD was bankrupt and incapable of honouring its commitments. At this juncture General Dino then reappeared to organize the restructuring of the formal shareholder composition of NDAD, with legal assistance from the office of Carlos Feijó.

The remaining US $50 million of the debt to Kassim Tajideen was paid off towards the end of 2013 largely thanks to a second loan of US$ 45 million obtained from Banco Privado Atlântico (the BPA, since renamed Millenium Atlântico) also arranged by General Dino.

In Feijó’s view, the relationship with Miclet had broken down due to the poor financial situation. He said there was a loss of confidence (in Vincent Miclet) and an erosion of trust between the various parties involved in the creation of NDAD and takeover of the Arosfran Group.

The reason was Vincent Miclet’s “erratic management” of NDAD and the lack of clarity regarding conflicting interests between NDAD and Miclet’s company Angodis, which also supplied the Angolan Armed Forces.

“The issues between Vincent Miclet, Kopelipa and Dino resulted in General Dino submitting a criminal complaint to the DNIAP (Direcção Nacional de Investigação e Acção Penal – the National Directorate for Criminal Investigation and Action). “I didn’t see it necessarily as a criminal situation but rather a civil matter which could be resolved through the courts”, says Feijó.

ADIEU, VINCENT

On February 25, 2015, measures were put in place to rescind the 80% stock quota allocated in the name of Vincent Miclet and the 20% quota in the name of Adélia El-Bichuti and re-allocate them instead to Paulo César Rocha Rasgado (80%) and Samora Borges Sebastião Albino (20%) respectively, the frontmen for General Dino. The process made no reference to any compensation or payment to the outgoing ‘partners’. After all, they were not the real owners.

However, Vincent Miclet then demanded a pay-off of US $56.6 million as “recompense for the acquisition of merchandise by three of his companies” – Pointpark Limited (registered in Dubai), Taycast Investiment Limited (also registered in Dubai) and Angodis – Angola Distribuição, Lda.

The already murky situation was further complicated by grave doubts about the legality of the transactions between them. The contract to supply the Defence Ministry was not with Angodis but his other firm Pointpark; however, Angodis received payments on Pointpark’s behalf.

There is documentary evidence that nefarious schemes were afoot. For example, on May 30, 2015 Angodis wrote to General Kopelipa and the then Defence Minister Cândido Van-Dúnem to effect the return of US $64 million “received in error”. Maka Angola has not been able to verify whether the sum was, in fact, returned.

In his written reply to Angodis, dated July 18, Lieutenant-General Francisco Firmino Jacinto (Director of the National Directorate for Administration and Finance at the Defence Ministry) begins by explaining the [erroneous] transfers as having been a “budgetary manoeuvre… to avoid their having to withdraw this amount from the Finance Ministry”.

It seems fair to say that the arrangement between Miclet’s companies and the Angolan Defence Ministry were not entirely above board. One of the best documented examples of theft by Miclet’s companies was that they devised a strategy to hold back a proportion of the supplies delivered to the Angolan Armed Forces. Paperwork prepared by senior officials working for Angodis, Pointpark and NDAD show that between 2011 and 2013 Miclet’s companies kept back US $20 million of food that was already paid for.

Imported rotten foodstuff to be resold in Angola

EVERYONE WANTED A PIECE OF THE PIE

Vincent Miclet committed his version of events to paper in a report for then President José Eduardo dos Santos – a copy of which was obtained by Maka Angola. In it, he says negotiations (to acquire the Arosfran Group] began in April 2011 and were chaired by “Mr Rui Ferreira, in the presence of the interested parties”.

He goes on to state: “On April 7, 2011, Mr Rui Ferreira drew up and signed a contract for the sale and purchase of the fixed and liquid assets of the commercial branch of the Arosfran Group.” He says initially the Group had demanded US $327.3 million dollars but eventually settled for US $144.5 million.

Further: “On April 5, 2011, on ‘orders from above’ [generally understood as coming from the Angolan President], the BAI bank granted a loan for the purpose of payment for the contractually agreed price for the parcel of assets as signed by the parties, with the transfer taking effect on July 20, 2011 of US $100 million to the Alicomerce company.”

Miclet says thereafter he used his own funds to restructure the company and pay for imports. But his summary of events gives the game away when he refers to an intervention by the President’s sister, Marta dos Santos, being interpreted as “treachery” by the “partners” (Generals Kopelipa and Dino).

And the fact is that they were the real owners of NDAD, not Miclet. He simply lent his name to the enterprise and ‘managed’ the company on their behalf until it was more or less bankrupt and they lost faith in him.

Why was NDAD was in such financial distress? Perhaps because the key figures were bleeding the company dry. Although NDAD reported profits of US $1.5 million in its first year of operation, former employees concur in saying there was no transparent accounting system in place.

Indeed, NDAD’s accounts were handled by Adélia Bandeira, an accountant with

Miclet’s firm Angodis. A former NDAD executive told us: “We (NDAD staffers) had no means of knowing the day-to-day financial situation of the firm.”

With NDAD nominally under new ‘management’, things came to a head in August of 2013 when Miclet flew his private jet to Luanda for the transfer or powers to Paulo Rasgado and Samora Albino. His jet was prevented from leaving. A furious Miclet blamed General Dino.

As his price for stepping away from NDAD, Miclet is said to have demanded compensation of US $82.5 million dollars, which he claimed was the value he had injected into the restructuring of the business and its import activities. After an audit by the Deloitte firm, his erstwhile ‘partners’ offered him a sweetener of US $26 million dollars, which Miclet rejected out of hand.

In spite of his ouster, Miclet tried to regroup, in particular via his new oil and gas venture Petroplus Overseas. But according to African Intelligence (IOL 814) his firm has “lost the lion’s share of its portfolio” in Gabon as well as its permits in Mali. Having taken so much of the pie over the past couple of decades, it appears Vincent may have bitten off more than he can chew.

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

Open Letter to the Eritrean Head of State

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Your Excellency, President Isaias Aferwerki:

We write to convey our most sincere congratulations upon your country’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. This is a development much appreciated by all Africans of goodwill.

We write to you in our capacity as citizens of Africa to pledge our unequivocal solidarity with all the people of Eritrea. This includes the many Eritreans we see enduring all manner of risk and suffering in search of a better life outside their homeland. We acknowledge that we too hail from nations with varying governance and developmental challenges.  We write to you, in the spirit of Pan-African solidarity, to seek common solutions to our shared problems.

Africa’s many disparate nation states have undergone significant and diverse changes over the course of the last two decades.   [Today, many more Africans live in freedom than under repression].  Importantly, those African countries that have made the most progress – including attracting investment and tourism – over the last 25 years have been those whose citizens enjoy greater freedom of expression, press and movement, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and political pluralism. 

Sadly, in these critical areas, Eritrea has not kept pace with the changes seen elsewhere.  Over the past two decades Eritrea has been described as the most closed society on our continent, an unfortunate situation for a country with such rich human capital and potential, with so much to offer not only Africa but also the world.

We trust that by opening this channel of communication with Your Excellency, we may be afforded the opportunity to work with you to restore your country and the great people of Eritrea to their rightful place in the family of African nations.

Of particular concern to us is the fate of several journalists and activists who have been imprisoned for prolonged periods of time in Eritrea, many of whom have reportedly been denied regular visits from their families and loved ones.

Equally, we are disheartened by the plight of the many thousands of Africans, including some Eritreans, who feel compelled to flee their home countries in search of a better life for themselves and their families, risking life and limb and enduring inhumane deprivations and indignities across deserts and oceans.

Too many of these fellow Africans have found themselves in the rapacious hands of modern day slave traders and people traffickers even causing some to end up in slave markets in places such as Libya. Too many of these migrants and refugees have perished at sea in their quest for a better life. 

We Africans are blessed with too much in our home countries to have our citizens suffer and be devalued this way.  This gloomy picture needs to change, and it is in this spirit that we address this message of solidarity to you, Your Excellency.

We respectfully call upon Your Excellency to allow a delegation of the signatories hereunder to visit Eritrea, and to afford us the opportunity to meet with you and your government as well as with ordinary citizens, including journalists, writers, and other persons currently in prison.

As with the bold step you have taken to normalize relations with Ethiopia, we believe a gesture of this kind would go a long way towards ending Eritrea’s isolation from the larger African family and could help usher in a new era of prosperity and freedom for your people.

It would be an honour to furnish you with any additional information you might require of us and we eagerly await your response.

The Signatories,

  1. Prof. Wole Soyinka, Nigeria, Nobel Laureate
  2. Rafael Marques de Morais, Angola, leading anti-corruption campaigner and award winning investigative journalist
  3. John Githongo, Kenya, publisher, leading anti-corruption campaigner and award winning anti-corruption activist
  4. Kwasi H. Prempeh, Ghana, Executive Director of Center for Democratic Development
  5. Farida Nabourema, Togo, Executive Director of Togolese Civil League
  6. Leyla Hussein, Somalia, Women’s Rights & Health Campaigner, psychotherapist, writer and founder of the Dahlia Project
  7. Maina Kiai, Kenya, founder of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association
  8. Maaza Mengiste, Ethiopia, award-winning writer of Beneath the Lion’s Gaze
  9. Iva Cabral, Cape Verde, Chancellor of Lusófona [Lusophone] University and  daughter of Amílcar Cabral
  10. Belabbès Benkredda, Algeria, CEO and Founder of the Munathara Initiative, the Arab world’s largest online and television debate forum highlighting voices of youth, women and marginalized communities.
  11. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, Uganda, a leading LGBT rights activist, founder and executive director of the LGBT rights organization Freedom & Roam Uganda, 2011 recipient of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders
  12. Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, Uganda, musician, member of parliament and youth leader recognized throughout East Africa
  13. Tundu Lissu, Tanzania, lawyer, CHADEMA politician, member of parliament and former president of the Tanganyika Law Society
  14. Amr Waked, Egypt, award winning actor, best known for his role in Syriana
  15. José Eduardo Agualusa, Angola, award winning writer, finalist in the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for his seminal work A General Theory of Oblivion
  16. Nasser Weddady, Mauritania, leading civil rights activist, consultant and co-editor of Arab Spring Dreams.
  17. Chiké Frankie Edozien, Nigeria, writer and professor of journalism at New York University
  18. Emmanuel Iduma, Nigeria, author
  19. Mona Eltahawy, Egypt, author and journalist
  20. Mireille Tushiminina, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gender & Equality advocate
  21. Felix Agbor Nkhongo, Cameroon, Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) and leading human rights defender
  22. Boniface Mwangi, Kenya, democracy activist, Ukweli political party founder, photographer and artist
  23. Adeyanju Deji, Nigeria, leading democracy activist and human rights defender
  24. Alieu Bah, The Gambia, leading democracy activist and human rights defender
  25. Tutu Alicante, Equatorial Guinea, leading democracy activist and Executive Director of Equatorial Guinea Justice (EG Justice)
  26. Andrea Ngombet Malewa, Congo Republic, Global Coordinator of the Sassoufit Collective 
  27. Roukaya Kasenally, Mauritius, CEO of African Media Initiative
  28. Abdelrahman Mansour, Egypt, Executive Director of Open Transformation Lab, leading human rights defender and journalist
  29. Reem Abbas, Sudan, journalist and leading human rights defender
  30. Moussa Kondo, Mali, journalist, CEO and founder of the weekly L’Express de Bamako, anti-corruption crusader, Country Director of Accountability Lab Mali, 2015 Mandela Washington Fellow, 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow.
  31. Ericino de Salema, Mozambique, Director of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA), academic, lawyer and journalist
  32. Jestina Mukoko, Zimbabwe, leading human rights activist and Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Initiative
  33. William Amanzuru, Uganda, environmental rights defender, founder of Friends of Zoka, winner of the EU Human Rights Defenders’ Award 2019
  34. Miguel de Barros, Guinea-Bissau, sociologist and Executive Director of the environmental NGO Tiniguena
  35. Bheki Makhubu, e-Swatini (formerly Swaziland), Editor of the Nation Magazine and leading democracy defender
  36. Edson da Luz aka Azagaia, Mozambique, rapper and leading activist
  37. Charles Onyango-Obbo, Uganda, leading publisher and columnist
  38. Rodney Sieh, Liberia, leading newspaper editor of FrontPage Africa and democracy activist
  39. Oludotun Babayemi, Nigeria, democracy activist and monitoring and evaluation expert,
  40. Akin Olaniyan, Nigeria
  41. Chanda Chisala, Zambia, founder and president of Zambia Online
  42. Dany Ayida, Togo, Resident, Country Director, National Democratic Institute (DRC)
  43. George Sarpong, Ghana
  44. Rosemary Mwakitwange, Tanzania, Chief of Party, Freedom House
  45. James Smart, Kenya, leading journalist and news anchor
  46. Abdulrazaq Alkali, Nigeria, Executive Director Organisation for Community Civic Engagement (OCCEN) Nigeria 
  47. Mathatha Tsedu, South Africa, Adjunct professor of journalism, Wits University and Acting Executive Director of the National Editors Forum (SANEF)
  48. Brenda Zulu, Zambia, journalist and ICT specialist
  49. Emanuel Saffa Abdulai, Sierra Leone, Executive Director of Society for Democracy Initiatives
  50. Zecharias Berhe, Ethiopia, Senior Fellow, African Good Governance Network
  51. Sylvia Amiani, Kenya, counseling and psychosocial practitioner focused on refugees in Germany
  52. Lamii Kpargoi, Liberia, journalist, democracy activist and lawyer
  53. Dr. George Ayittey, Ghana, economist, author and president of the Free Africa Foundation, Washington DC
  54. Evan Mawarire, Zimbabwe, pastor and democracy activist, founder of #ThisFlag movement
  55. Zineb El Rhazoui, Morocco, journalist and human rights advocate
  56. Marc Ona Essangui, Gabon, environmentalist, Executive Secretary of Brainforest
  57. Fred Bauma, Democratic Republic of Congo, democracy and youth activist, leader of the Lucha Social Movement
  58. Dr. Justin Pearce, South Africa, Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University
  59. Asma Khalifa, Libya, activist, cofounder of Tamazight Women Movement
  60. Violet Gonda, Zimbabwe, journalist and President of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT)
  61. Fatoumata Camara, The Gambia, journalist, CEO/Founder  of the Fatu Network
  62. Jelili Atiku, Nigeria, human rights artist
  63. Fred Muvunyi, Rwanda, editor at Deutsche Welle, Op-Ed contributor for Washington Post and a consultant for Freedom House
  64. Aimable Manikrakiza, Burundi, CEO of the Centre for Development and Enterprises Great Lakes
  65. Houssem Aoudi, Tunisia, CEO/Founder of Wasabi and Cogite – co-working Space, entrepeneur and activist
  66. Chouchou Namegabe, Democratic Republic of Congo, journalist and human rights activist, CEO & Founder Anzafrika
  67. Thulani Maseko, e-Swatini (formerly Swaziland), leading human rights lawyer
  68. Samba Dialimpa Badji, Senegal, journalist
  69. Mariama Camara, Guinea, fashion designer and humanitarian, Founder/President of Mariama Fashion Production and the There is No Limit Foundation
  70. Olívio Diogo, São Tomé, sociologist and media commentator, coordinator of the Civil Society Network
  71. Adeola Fayehun, Nigeria, journalist/producer, Keeping it Real with Adeola
  72. Mohamed Soltan, Egypt, Executive Director, the Freedom Initiative
  73. Memory Banda, Malawi, children’s rights activist
  74. Ali Amar, Morocco, veteran journalist, co-founder and director of online news outlet Le Desk
  75. Mohamed Keita, Mali,  Pan African rights advocate
  76. Norman Tjombe, Namibia, human rights lawyer and activist
  77. Uyapo Ndadi, Botswana, human rights lawyer, activist, and founder of the Ndadi Law Firm
  78. Phil ya Nangoloh, Namibia, human rights activist, monitor and Executive Director of NamRights Inc
  79. Jacqueline Moudeina, Chad, prominent award-winning lawyer and human rights activist
  80. Rosmon Zokoue, Central African Republic, journalist, blogger and activist
  81. Ahmed Gatnash, Libya, co-founder & VP of Operations, Kawaakibi Foundation
  82. Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Ghana, Africa’s leading investigative journalist and private investigator
  83. Boubacar Diallo, Niger, Editor, Liberation newspaper
  84. Abdourahman Waberi, Djibouti, acclaimed novelist, essayist, academic and short story writer, human rights activist, professor of literature at George Washington University
  85. Doudou Dia, Senegal, Executive Director, Goree Institute, Center for Democracy, Development and Culture in Africa
  86. Alain Mabanckou, Congo, novelist, journalist, poet and academic
  87. Francis Kpatindé, Benin, journalist, former editor-in-chief of the newsweekly Jeune Afrique and former spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
  88. Mustafa Haji Abdinur, Somalia, award-winning journalist
  89. Thembo Kash, Democratic Republic of Congo, award-winning cartoonist
  90. Damien Glez, Burkina Faso, award-winning editorial cartoonist
  91. Ahmed Abdallah, Comoros, journalist
  92. Anton Harber, South Africa, former journalist with the Rand Daily Mail until its closure by the apartheid government, co-founder and editor of the Weekly Mail (now The Mail & Guardian) and Professor of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand
  93. John-Allan Namu, Kenya, award-winning investigative journalist, co-founder of Africa Uncensored, 2017 Desmond Tutu Fellow
  94. Alice Nkom, Cameroon, leading human rights lawyer, defender of rights of the LGBT community
  95. Mouctar Bah, Guinea, veteran journalist
  96.  Andrew Feinstein, South Africa, former ANC MP, Executive Director of Corruption Watch UK, author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
  97. William Rasoanaivo, Madagascar, award-winning political cartoonist
  98. Claudia Gastrow, South Africa, anthropologist, Univeristy of Johannesburg
  99.  Motlatsi Thabane, Lesotho, professor of History, University of e-Swatini
  100. Cyriac Gbogou, Ivory Coast, blogger, co-founder of O’Village and key actor in the new technology sector in the country
  101. Canon Clement Hilary Janda, South Sudan, Pan African Ecumenist
  102. Ola Diab, Sudan, journalist and activist

* This article has been updated 10 June 2019, 10.27 p.m.

Press Release: African Activists Sign Letter to Eritrean President

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Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka joins over 100 African activists and academics from 52 of 54 African countries, including Ugandan musician and opposition MP Bobi Wine, award winning Kenyan anti-corruption activist John Githongo, Egyptian actor Amr Waked, award winning human rights lawyer Alice Nkom, novelist Alain Mabanckou, award winning investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in signing a letter to Eritrean head of state.

DEAR MR PRESIDENT,

PLEASE WELCOME US TO ERITREA

AFRICAN DEMOCRACY ADVOCATES, JOURNALISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ASK TO VISIT THEIR INCARCERATED COLLEAGUES IN ERITREA.

One hundred (100) leading African journalists, democracy and human rights advocates took the opportunity on Africa Day – May 25th 2019 to write an open letter to Eritrea’s President Isaias Aferwerki. It is released today Monday 10th June 2019. They requested the head of state an opportunity to visit their colleagues incarcerated in Eritrea.

In a message of solidarity with all the people of Eritrea the group appreciated the recent progress made by Eritrea in normalizing relations with Ethiopia – two of the Horn Africa’s most vital countries. They hoped this represented the a new era of deepening stability and prosperity in the region They beseeched the President to maintain the momentum of opening up Eritrea after a period of isolation that was not only a loss to Eritrea but to all of Africa. They also observed that basic freedoms and true development go hand in hand.

Additionally they expressed concern for the hostile climate that has prevailed in Eritrea especially for journalists, oppositionists, human rights activists and the proponents of democracy. They observed that many Eritreans had been incarcerated for political reasons in part creating a climate of fear that has led to considerable migration out of the proud country. Representing a cross-section of similar journalists and activists from across the African continent, they formally requested to visit their incarcerated colleagues in Eritrea to express not only their solidarity with their Eritrean brothers and sisters but to remind them that Africa will never forget or abandon them.

#PanAfricanSolidarityEritrea

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For more information contact:

Rafael Marques de Morais +244 917 242 438 (WhatsApp), Portuguese and

English

John Githongo – +254 738 5626 620 (WhatsApp), English

Farida Nabourema – +1 240 550 0665 (WhatsApp), French and English

Mohamed Keita – +1 917 526 2237 (WhatsApp), French and English

E-mail: PanAfricanSolidarity@gmail.com

Twitter: @EritreaPan

*Updated 10 June 10.27 p.m.


Défenseurs de la Démocratie de 52 Pays Africains Écrivent une Lettre au Chef de L’État Érythréen

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Plus de 100 défenseurs de la démocratie de 52 pays africains, dont le lauréat du prix Nobel Wole Soyinka, écrivent une lettre au chef de l’État érythréen.

Luanda le 10 Juin 2019—-DES ÉCRIVAINS, DES JOURNALISTES, DES ACADÉMICIENS, DES MILITANTS DES DROITS HUMAINS ET DES FIGURES DE LA SOCIETE CIVILE DE 52 PAYS AFRICAINS DEMANDENT À RENDRE VISITE À LEURS COLLÈGUES INCARCÉRÉS EN ÉRYTHRÉE.

Cent (100) éminents défenseurs de la démocratie venant de 52 pays d’Afrique, y compris le lauréat du prix Nobel Wole Soyinka, le romancier, journaliste, poète et universitaire de renom Alain Mabanckou et le chanteur et député d’opposition ougandais Bobi Wine, ont saisi l’occasion de la Journée de l’Afrique, le 25 mai 2019, pour écrire une lettre ouverte au président érythréen Isaias Aferwerki. Ele a été publiée le 10 juin 2019. Ils ont demandé au chef de l’État la possibilité de rendre visite à leurs collègues incarcérés en Érythrée.

Dans un message de solidarité avec l’ensemble de la population érythréenne, le groupe s’est félicité des progrès accomplis récemment par l’Érythrée dans la normalisation de ses relations avec l’Éthiopie – deux des pays les plus importants de la Corne de l’Afrique. Ils ont prié le Président de maintenir la dynamique d’ouverture de l’Érythrée après une période d’isolement qui a été une perte non seulement pour l’Érythrée mais pour toute l’Afrique. Ils ont également observé que les libertés fondamentales et le véritable développement vont de pair.

En outre, ils se sont dits préoccupés par le climat hostile qui règne en Érythrée, en particulier pour les journalistes, les opposants, les défenseurs des droits de l’homme et les partisans de la démocratie. Ils ont observé que de nombreux Érythréens avaient été incarcérés pour des raisons politiques, créant en partie un climat de peur qui a conduit à une migration considérable hors du pays. Représentant un échantillon représentatif de la société civile de tout le continent africain, ils ont officiellement demandé à rendre visite à leurs collègues incarcérés en Érythrée non seulement pour exprimer leur solidarité avec leurs frères et sœurs érythréens, mais aussi pour leur rappeler que l’Afrique ne les oubliera ni ne les abandonnera.

Pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez contacter :

Farida Nabourema – +1 240 550 0665 (WhatsApp), français et anglais

Rafael Marques de Morais +244 917 242 438 (WhatsApp), portugais et espagnol

John Githongo – +254 738 5626 620 (WhatsApp), Anglais

Courriel : PanAfricanSolidarity@gmail.com

Twitter : @EritreaPan

#PanAfricanSolidarityEritrea

Le 25 Mai 2019

Votre Excellence, Monsieur le Président Isaias Aferwerki :

Nous vous écrivons pour vous adresser nos plus sincères félicitations à l’occasion de la normalisation des relations diplomatiques entre votre pays et l’Éthiopie. Il s’agit là d’une évolution très appréciée par tous les Africains de bonne volonté.

Nous vous écrivons en notre qualité de citoyens d’Afrique pour vous assurer de notre solidarité sans équivoque avec tout le peuple érythréen. Cela inclut les nombreux Érythréens que nous voyons endurer toutes sortes de risques et de souffrances à la recherche d’une vie meilleure en dehors de leur patrie. Nous reconnaissons que nous venons nous aussi de pays dont la gouvernance et les défis en matière de développement varient.  Nous vous écrivons, dans un esprit de solidarité panafricaine, pour rechercher des solutions communes à nos problèmes communs.

Les nombreux États-nations disparates de l’Afrique ont connu des changements importants et divers au cours des deux dernières décennies.   Aujourd’hui, beaucoup plus d’Africains vivent en liberté que sous la répression].  Il est important de noter que les pays africains qui ont le plus progressé au cours des 25 dernières années – notamment en attirant les investissements et le tourisme – sont ceux dont les citoyens jouissent d’une plus grande liberté d’expression, de presse et de circulation, de l’état de droit, d’un système judiciaire indépendant et du pluralisme politique. 

Malheureusement, dans ces domaines critiques, l’Érythrée n’a pas suivi le rythme des changements observés ailleurs.  Au cours des deux dernières décennies, l’Érythrée a été décrite comme la société la plus fermée de notre continent, une situation malheureuse pour un pays doté d’un capital humain et d’un potentiel aussi riches, et qui a tant à offrir non seulement à l’Afrique mais aussi au monde.

Nous espérons qu’en ouvrant cette voie de communication avec Votre Excellence, nous aurons l’occasion de travailler avec vous pour redonner à votre pays et au grand peuple érythréen la place qui leur revient dans la famille des nations africaines.

Nous sommes particulièrement préoccupés par le sort de plusieurs journalistes et militants pacifiques des droits civiques qui restent emprisonnés depuis plusieurs années en Érythrée. Beaucoup se seraient vu refuser des visites régulières de leur famille et de leurs proches.

De même, nous sommes attristés par le sort de milliers d’Africains, dont certains Érythréens, qui se sentent obligés de fuir leur pays d’origine à la recherche d’une vie meilleure pour eux-mêmes et leur famille, risquant leur vie et leur intégrité physique et subissant des privations et des indignités inhumaines dans les déserts et les océans.

Trop de ces compatriotes africains se sont retrouvés entre les mains ravisseurs des marchands d’esclaves et des trafiquants d’êtres humains d’aujourd’hui, ce qui a même conduit certains d’entre eux à se retrouver sur les marchés aux esclaves dans des endroits comme la Libye. Trop de ces migrants et réfugiés ont péri en mer dans leur quête d’une vie meilleure. 

Nous, les Africains, avons la chance d’avoir trop de choses dans nos pays d’origine pour que nos citoyens souffrent et soient dévalorisés de cette façon.  Ce sombre tableau doit changer, et c’est dans cet esprit que nous vous adressons ce message de solidarité, Votre Excellence.

Nous demandons respectueusement à Votre Excellence de permettre à une délégation des signataires ci-après de se rendre en Érythrée et de nous donner l’occasion de vous rencontrer, vous et votre gouvernement, ainsi que des citoyens ordinaires, y compris les journalistes, écrivains et autres personnes actuellement en prison.

Comme pour la mesure audacieuse que vous avez prise pour normaliser les relations avec l’Éthiopie, nous pensons qu’un tel geste contribuerait grandement à mettre fin à l’isolement de l’Érythrée de la grande famille africaine et pourrait contribuer à ouvrir une nouvelle ère de prospérité et de liberté pour votre peuple.

Ce serait un honneur de vous fournir tout complément d’information dont vous pourriez avoir besoin et nous attendons votre réponse avec impatience.

Les Signataires,

  1. Wole Soyinka, Nigeria, lauréat du prix Nobel
  2. Rafael Marques de Morais, Angola, principal militant anti-corruption et journaliste d’investigation primé
  3. John Githongo, Kenya, éditeur, militant anti-corruption et journaliste d’investigation primé.
  4. Kwasi H. Prempeh, Ghana, Directeur exécutif du Centre pour le développement démocratique
  5. Farida Nabourema, Togo, Directrice exécutive de la Ligue civile togolaise
  6. Leyla Hussein, Somalie, militante des droits des femmes et de la santé, psychothérapeute, écrivaine et fondatrice du projet Dahlia.
  7. Maina Kiai, Kenya, fondateur de la Commission kenyane des droits de l’homme (KHRC) et ancien Rapporteur spécial des Nations Unies sur le droit de réunion pacifique et d’association
  8. Maaza Mengiste, Éthiopie, écrivaine primée, auteur du roman Sous le regard du lion.
  9. Iva Cabral, Cap-Vert, Chancelière de l’Université de Lusófona[Lusophone] et fille d’Amílcar Cabral
  10. Belabbès Benkredda, Algérie, PDG et fondateur de l’Initiative Munathara, le plus grand forum de débat en ligne et télévisé du monde arabe, qui met en lumière les voix des jeunes, des femmes et des communautés marginalisées.
  11. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, Ouganda, militante des droits des LGBT, fondatrice et directrice exécutive de l’organisation Freedom & Roam Uganda, lauréate 2011 du Prix Martin Ennals pour les défenseurs des droits humains.
  12. L’honorable Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, Ouganda, musicien, député et jeune leader reconnu dans toute l’Afrique de l’Est.
  13. Tundu Lissu, Tanzanie, avocat, député du parti CHADEMA, et ancien président de la Société du Barreau du Tanganyika.
  14. Amr Waked, Égypte, acteur primé, mieux connu pour son rôle dans le film Syriana
  15. José Eduardo Agualusa, Angola, écrivain primé, finaliste du Prix international Man Booker 2016 pour son œuvre phare A General Theory of Oblivion.
  16. Nasser Weddady, Mauritanie, militant des droits civiques, consultant et co-éditeur d’Arab Spring Dreams.
  17. Chiké Frankie Edozien, Nigeria, écrivain et professeur de journalisme à l’Université de New York
  18. Emmanuel Iduma, Nigeria, auteur
  19. Mona Eltahawy, Egypte, auteur et journaliste
  20. Mireille Tushiminina, République démocratique du Congo, militante pour l’égalité entre les sexes
  21. Felix Agbor Nkhongo, Cameroun, avocat, Directeur du Centre pour les droits de l’homme et la démocratie en Afrique (CHRDA)
  22. Boniface Mwangi, Kenya, militant pour la démocratie, fondateur du parti politique Ukweli, photographe et artiste.
  23. Adeyanju Deji, Nigéria, militant pour la démocratie et défenseur des droits humains de premier plan
  24. Alieu Bah, Gambie, militant pour la démocratie et défenseur des droits humains de premier plan
  25. Tutu Alicante, Guinée équatoriale, militant pour la démocratie et directeur exécutif de Equatorial Guinea Justice (EG Justice)
  26. Andrea Ngombet Malewa, République du Congo, Coordinatrice mondiale du collectif Sassoufit
  27. Roukaya Kasenally, Maurice, PDG de African Media Initiative
  28. Abdelrahman Mansour, Egypte, Directeur exécutif de l’Open Transformation Lab, défenseur des droits humains et journaliste de renom
  29. Reem Abbas, Soudan, journaliste et défenseur des droits humains de premier plan
  30. Moussa Kondo, Mali, journaliste, PDG et fondateur de l’hebdomadaire L’Express de Bamako, militant anti-corruption, directeur national du Accountability Lab Mali, 2015 Mandela Washington Fellow, 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow.
  31. Ericino de Salema, Mozambique, Directeur de l’Institut électoral pour la démocratie durable en Afrique (EISA), universitaire, avocat et journaliste
  32. Jestina Mukoko, Zimbabwe, militante des droits humains et directrice de l’Initiative de paix pour le Zimbabwe
  33. William Amanzuru, Ouganda, défenseur des droits environnementaux, fondateur de Friends of Zoka, lauréat du Prix européen des défenseurs des droits humains 2019
  34. Miguel de Barros, Guinée-Bissau, sociologue et directeur exécutif de l’ONG environnementale Tiniguena
  35. Bheki Makhubu, e-Swatini (anciennement Swaziland), rédacteur en chef du magazine Nation et défenseur de la démocratie de renom
  36. Edson da Luz aka Azagaia, Mozambique, rappeur et activiste de renom
  37. Charles Onyango-Obbo, Ouganda, éditeur et chroniqueur de renom
  38. Rodney Sieh, Libéria, rédacteur en chef de FrontPage Africa et militant pour la démocratie
  39. Oludotun Babayemi, Nigéria, militant pour la démocratie et expert en suivi et évaluation,
  40. Akin Olaniyan, Nigeria
  41. Chanda Chisala, Zambie
  42. Dany Ayida, Togo, résident, directeur national, National Democratic Institute
  43. George Sarpong, Ghana
  44. Rosemary Mwakitwange, Tanzanie, Chef de projet, Freedom House
  45. James Smart, Kenya, journaliste et présentateur de nouvelles de premier plan
  46. Abdulrazaq Alkali, Nigeria, Directeur exécutif de l’Organisation pour l’engagement civique communautaire du Nigeria (OCCEN)
  47. Mathatha Tsedu, Afrique du Sud, professeur auxiliaire de journalisme à l’Université de Wits et directeur exécutif par intérim du National Editors Forum (SANEF)
  48. Brenda Zulu, Zambie, journaliste et spécialiste des TIC
  49. Emanuel Saffa Abdulai, Sierra Leone, Directeur exécutif de Society for Democracy Initiatives
  50. Zecharias Berhe, Éthiopie, Éthiopie, Senior Fellow, Réseau africain pour la bonne gouvernance
  51. Sylvia Amiani, Kenya, Kenya, conseil et praticien psychosocial axé sur les réfugiés en Allemagne
  52. Lamii Kpargoi, Libéria, journaliste, militant pour la démocratie et avocat
  53. George Ayittey, Ghana, économiste, auteur et président de la Free Africa Foundation, Washington DC
  54. Evan Mawarire, Zimbabwe, pasteur et militant pour la démocratie, fondateur du mouvement #ThisFlag
  55. Zineb El Rhazoui, Maroc, journaliste et défenseuse des droits humains
  56. Marc Ona Essangui, Gabon, lauréat du prix Goldman pour l’environnement, secrétaire exécutif de Brainforest, coordinateur au Gabon du mouvement panafricain pour le changement démocratique Tournons La Page
  57. Fred Bauma, République démocratique du Congo, militant pour la démocratie et la jeunesse, leader du mouvement citoyen Lucha
  58. Justin Pearce, Afrique du Sud, Département de politique et d’études internationales, Université de Cambridge
  59. Asma Khalifa, Libye, militante, cofondatrice du Mouvement des femmes Tamazight
  60. Violet Gonda, Zimbabwe, journaliste et présidente de l’Association internationale des femmes en radio et télévision (IAWRT)
  61. Fatoumata Camara, Gambie, journaliste, PDG/Fondateur du Réseau Fatu
  62. Jelili Atiku, Nigéria, artiste des droits humains
  63. Fred Muvunyi, Rwanda, journaliste à Deutsche Welle, chroniqueur du Washington Post et consultant pour Freedom House.
  64. Aimable Manikrakiza, Burundi, PDG du Centre pour le développement et les entreprises des Grands Lacs
  65. Houssem Aoudi, Tunisie, PDG fondateur de Wasabi et Cogite – Coworking Space, entrepreneur et activiste
  66. Chouchou Namegabe, République démocratique du Congo, journaliste et militante des droits humains, PDG et fondateur d’Anzafrika
  67. Thulani Maseko, e-Swatini (anciennement Swaziland), avocat spécialiste des droits humains
  68. Samba Dialimpa, Badji, Sénégal, journaliste
  69. Mariama Camara, Guinée, créatrice de mode et humanitaire, fondatrice/présidente de Mariama Fashion Production et de la Fondation There is No Limit.
  70. Olívio Diogo, São Tomé, sociologue et commentateur des médias, coordinateur du Réseau de la société civile
  71. Adeola Fayehun, Nigeria, journaliste/productrice, Keeping it Real with Adeola
  72. Mohamed Soltan, Égypte, Directeur exécutif, Initiative pour la liberté
  73. Memory Banda, Malawi, militante des droits de l’enfant
  74. Ali Amar, Maroc, journaliste chevronné, co-fondateur et directeur du journal en ligne Le Desk.
  75. Ahmed Gatnash, Libye, cofondateur et vice-président des opérations, Fondation Kawaakibi
  76. Mohamed Keita, Mali, défenseur panafricain des droits humains
  77. Norman Tjombe, Namibie, avocat et militant des droits humains
  78. Uyapo Ndadi, Botswana, avocat défenseur des droits humains, activiste et fondateur du cabinet d’avocats Ndadi
  79. Phil ya Nangoloh, Namibie, militant des droits humains, moniteur et directeur exécutif de NamRights Inc.
  80. Jacqueline Moudeina, Tchad, avocate primée et militante des droits de l’homme.
  81. Rosmon Zokoue, République centrafricaine, journaliste, blogueur et activiste
  82. Anas Arameyaw Anas, Ghana, premier journaliste d’investigation et enquêteur privé d’Afrique
  83. Boubacar Diallo, Niger, rédacteur en chef, journal Libération
  84. Abdourahman Waberi, Djibouti, romancier, essayiste, universitaire et nouvelliste de renom, militant des droits de l’homme, professeur de littérature à l’Université George Washington.
  85. Doudou Dia, Sénégal, Directeur exécutif, Institut de Gorée, Centre pour la démocratie, le développement et la culture en Afrique
  86. Alain Mabanckou, Congo, romancier, journaliste, poète et universitaire de renom
  87. Francis Kpatindé, Bénin, journaliste, ancien rédacteur en chef du magazine Jeune Afrique et ancien porte-parole du Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (HCR)
  88. Mustafa Haji Abdinur, Somalie, journaliste primé
  89. Thembo Kash, République démocratique du Congo, caricaturiste primé
  90. Damien Glez, Burkina Faso, caricaturiste éditorialiste primé
  91. Ahmed Abdallah, Comores, journaliste de premier plan
  92. Anton Harber, Afrique du Sud, ancien journaliste du Rand Daily Mail jusqu’à sa fermeture par le gouvernement de l’apartheid, cofondateur et rédacteur en chef du Weekly Mail (maintenant The Mail & Guardian) et professeur de journalisme à l’Université du Witwatersrand
  93. John-Allan Namu, Kenya, journaliste d’investigation primé, cofondateur de Africa Uncensored, 2017 Desmond Tutu Fellow
  94. Alice Nkom, Cameroun, avocate de renom spécialisée dans les droits humains, défenseure des droits de la communauté LGBT
  95. Mouctar Bah, Guinée, journaliste chevronné de premier plan
  96.  Andrew Feinstein, Afrique du Sud, ancien député de l’ANC, directeur exécutif de Corruption Watch UK, auteur de The Shadow World : A l’intérieur du commerce mondial des armes
  97. William Rasoanaivo, Madagascar, caricaturiste politique primé
  98. Claudia Gastrow, Afrique du Sud, anthropologue, Université de Johannesburg
  99.  Motlatsi Thabane, Lesotho, professeur d’histoire, Université d’e-Swatini
  100. Cyriac Gbogou, Côte d’Ivoire, blogueur, co-fondateur d’O’Village et acteur clé dans le secteur des nouvelles technologies dans le pays
  101. Le chanoine Clément Hilary Janda, Soudan du Sud, œcuméniste panafricain
  102. Ola Diab, Soudan, journaliste et activiste

NO MAGIC – ANGOLA’S BANKING SYSTEM IS JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS

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What happened to the US $2 billion injection of funds from Angola’s central bank (BNA) in 2014 that was supposed to refinance the Banco Económico (BE) as it emerged from the ashes of the failed Banco Espírito Santos (BESA)? Surely José de Lima Massano must have some idea? He was Governor of the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) then and is again now. Did he keep track of where the money went? Because the BE is failing again and he seems all too ready to throw good money after bad: ordering majority shareholder Sonangol to inject a further US $1.2 billion of public money into it. So who does this bailout benefit?

Mr. Massano is the master magician tasked by President João Lourenço with restoring good governance to the Angolan banking system. Is he not up to the job? Or is he actively sabotaging it?

According to Diamantino de Azevedo, the Minister for Oil and Mineral Resources, Sonangol has been ordered to put up a staggering US $1.2 billion to bail out the Banco Económico thanks to an “instruction from the National Bank of Angola (BNA) in its capacity as the regulatory body”.

This, although neither the BNA nor anyone in government seems to have the slightest clue what happened to the US $2 billion of public money Massano arranged in the 2014 takeover of the Banco Económico, in what was supposed to be a short-term injection of capital.

To date the US $2 billion has never been repaid to the Angolan public purse and while the BNA’s own auditors have repeatedly asked for clarification and explanations, Mr Massano’s only response is that the money was assigned to the bank’s capital reserves. Yet the BE is apparently insolvent again and the BNA is left holding a worthless IOU, which was supposed to be guaranteed by the National Insurance Company, (Empresa Nacional de Seguros, ENSA). Maka Angola will follow up in a future report into the role of the National Insurance Company in this farrago.

Chronicle of a crisis foretold

Sonangol, which became a majority shareholder to bail out the Banco Económico in 2014, was in a far, far better state of financial health than it finds itself today. Even back then the state oil company was finding it increasingly difficult to comply with all its obligations. Where is it supposed find another US $1.2 billion now, when it is in such a perilous financial state that it cannot even afford to update the anti-virus software for its office computers?

And how can Mr. Massano, as financial sector regulator, justify forcing Sonangol to use public money to acquire stock of dubious value in a supposedly-commercial institution in order to prevent it from going under?

Don’t forget José de Lima Massano was the BNA Governor who in 2014 ordered Sonangol to cough up for BE in spite of a glaring conflict of interest: Mr. Massano was not only himself a former Sonangol executive but a protégé of the infamous Manuel Vicente, one of the former President’s right-hand men and one of the principle beneficiaries of the corrupt regime that used Sonangol as their private income stream.

Angola’s central bank governor, José de Lima Massano.

As recorded in previous editions of Maka Angola, the entire saga of the death of the Banco Espírito Santo, and consequent creation of Banco Económico, was due to an insider coup by the Angolans, which brought down one of Portugal’s oldest private banks.

In July 2014 Massano’s BNA advised the BESA Board of Directors that the bank’s position required an immediate injection of capital equivalent to US $2.7 billion to avoid imminent insolvency. The BNA gave BESA’s Board of Directors a 48 hour deadline for “current shareholders” to respond while throwing the bank a lifeline: if the shareholders were unable to put together the entire amount, the Angolan State would intervene with contingency funds subject to certain conditions it referred to as ‘special measures’. Out of time and facing certain ruin, the Board consented.

Within three months, the BNA’s capital requirement had ballooned from US $2.7 billion to US $4.9 billion dollars and it announced that it would implement the proposed special measures “as approved by BESA shareholders”.

There followed the infamous special general meeting chaired by the provisional administrator, António Ramos da Cruz, directly appointed by José de Lima Massano, which gave the president’s notorious ‘triumvirate’ (General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento “Dino”, General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa” and Manuel Vicente) majority control of the BESA bank, renamed the Banco Económico.

In what was both unprecedented (and illegal), institutions that were not hitherto shareholders in BESA were allowed to vote in the special meeting that resulted in their sharing out the bank’s stock amongst themselves in exchange for the injection of capital (see attached table).

The new shareholders were given seven working days to come up with their share of the capital as laid out. This was not enforced by the BNA. Even one year later, only Sonangol had actually delivered any funds at all: a total of US $125 million out of the US $286.5 million it was supposed to invest.

Curiously, Zandre Eudénio Campos Finda attended that special general meeting as the official representative of a BESA shareholder company named Portmill Investimentos S.A, which owned 24% of BESA. As reported by Maka Angola it later became clear that he was just the ‘straw man’ and Portmill really belonged to the ‘triumvirate’.

One of the ‘new’ shareholders, Lektron Capital, was supposedly a Chinese-owned company but in reality was registered in Angola by the same Zandre Eudénio Campos Finda. The implication was clearly that this too was nothing more than a front for the presidential triumvirate.

The evidence suggests the triumvirate had spent months planning how to wrest control of BESA from its parent bank, the BES. Lektron’s main source of capital? No prizes for guessing it was actually Sonangol. Lektron obtained a US $132.7 million dollar credit from Sonangol in May 2014, five months ahead of time and subsequent public statements have confirmed the money was specifically for the acquisition of BE stock (see below). Sonangol requested repayment in 2018 but (in common with other loans and investments made to the former President’s corrupt cabal) none was forthcoming.

Prestidigitation

BNA Governor Massano’s documented sleight-of-hand in moving public monies from the central bank to private banks owned by Dos Santos cronies include managing an increase of capital to the Novo Banco by means of a US $500 million ‘loan’ from the Portuguese-owned Banco de Espirito Santo to its Angolan subsidiary (BESA) in exchange for stock. Yet Novo Banco’s stake for 9% of BE cost it precisely nothing.

Instead Banco Novo used the loan for other ends. The paper trail shows most of the money was actually used to fund the construction of the (as yet uncompleted) Torres Kinaxixi. And who owns that project? Two of the Triumvirate (Generals Dino and Kopelipa) in partnership with their dual national Angolan-Brazilian sidekick, Minoru Dondo.

Over and over and over, José de Lima Massano has used his position and influence to favour the business interests of his mentor Manuel Vicente, Generals Dino and Kopelipa (aka the ‘Triumvirate’) and other corrupt members of the Dos Santos cabal. The evidence of BNA malfeasance was so undeniable it led to the European Central Bank branding Angola a “poorly-regulated jurisdiction” and ordering the BPI to pull investment from the country to limit its exposure.

And yet, in spite of his record, Massano was brought back as BNA Governor by President João Lourenço. Since then he has manipulated the foreign exchange market to allow more than US $5 billion in foreign exchange to private banks and firms on credit even though allowing them to delay payment (in the national currency, the Kwanza) for the purchase of US dollars would result in private gain and public loss. In that dubious manoeuvre alone, the Banco Económico received 20%, more than one billion US dollars, of the funds in question. It should be a matter of legally-required disclosure that the BNA reveal who else benefited from this foreign exchange carnival.

Now you see it, now you don’t

The fact that Lektron only obtained its stake in Banco Económico thanks to using $125 million of the $132.7 million loan it obtained from Sonangol, was revealed in a report issued in June this year by Angola’s National Service for the Recovery of Assets, a branch of the Office of the State Attorney-General (Serviço Nacional de Recuperação de Activos, SNRA).

The SNRA report states baldly that the Sonangol loan to Lektron was for “the acquisition of shares in the Banco Económico” and it names the Lektron beneficiaries: former Sonangol chief (and Vice-President of Angola under Dos Santos) Manuel Vicente and his fellow Triumvirate colleague, General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior, ‘Kopelipa’.

According to the SNRA: “Lektron has voluntarily handed back its stake to the Angolan State”. Really? It seems only to have returned shares notionally worth US $125 million and not exactly voluntarily. And no accounting for the remaining US $7.7 million of the Sonangol loan?

It doesn’t require any forensic expertise to figure out what happened. The Angolan players (notably the ‘Triumvirate’) must have planned to defraud the Banco Espírito Santo and take control of its Angolan subsidiary months in advance and they used Sonangol’s capital to achieve it while handily also rewarding themselves with a few million for their ‘ingenuity’. US $7.7 million could have bought Angola a new school or health clinic – it was just spare change to the men who had already embezzled billions of dollars from the Angolan Treasury.

The Dos Santos regime’s kleptocrats hoped they’d made it too time-consuming and difficult for any serious investigation of their financial crimes to culminate in prosecution and confiscation of their ill-gotten gains. They were wrong. So, isn’t it utterly absurd to find Angolan officials in the current ‘anti-corruption’ regime justifying throwing yet more public money at them?

In effect, the BNA’s order to Sonangol to bail out the BE is an attempt to throw good money after bad at a failing institution linked to corrupt politically-exposed persons (PEPs). And how do they justify this? They blame the BE’s illiquidity on one of the shareholder companies failing to comply with its financial undertakings. Which one? Is it really a surprise that it would be the fake ‘Chinese’ company Lektron, which in reality was owned by the Triumvirate?

When Minister Diamantino de Azevedo reported that “one of the shareholders failed to comply with the demand for a capital injection”, he accidently revealed the culprit by stating Sonangol had absorbed its share of the bank stock, making Sonangol the majority shareholder with 70.37% of the stock. It had gained 30.9% – the exact percentage owned by Lektron. And just like that, the truth of the illusion was revealed. Whereas the SNRA claimed Lektron had voluntarily handed back its share of the Bank, the fact is that Lektron actually failed to deliver any of the promised capital it had pre-obtained as a loan from Sonangol. Far from an altruistic return of assets to the state, Lektron defaulted and was thus obliged to forfeit its percentage of BE stock. Not that it repaid the Sonangol loan either. No doubt, they were hoping no-one would notice.

Who’s fooling who?

If João Lourenço’s government is serious about recovering the assets stolen by the Dos Santos cabal over decades, then the Office of the State Attorney-General needs to be able to join the dots.

If Angola’s political and legal institutions are still incapable of finding the truth (or worse, are deliberately assisting in the cover up), in effect they are participating in the obstruction of justice and those involved are co-conspirators in crimes against the state.

Sadly, the signs are not encouraging. Despite the revelations, Massano is still Governor of the BNA. And he continues to put in place aides known to have helped the Triumvirate in the past: men like António Ramos da Cruz, the patsy who chaired the BESA special general meeting that cemented the illicit takeover who has now been named by Massano to the position of Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Banco Económico.

Generals Dino and Kopelipa, ex-President Dos Santos and Manuel Vicente (left to right).

Can the BNA be trusted not to interfere in the administration of failing commercial banks?

How can anyone expect honest and transparent administration of this bank in the circumstances, or indeed of any part of the Angolan banking system, when the man in charge of the financial regulator is the same poacher-turned-gamekeeper of yesteryear?

The BNA is constituted to act as an independent and separate institution to act in the best interests of the Angolan people. Is it doing what it is legally required to do? The evidence suggests otherwise. Can the BNA be trusted not to manipulate exchange rates in favour of cronies of the current Governor?

In short, can the current BNA Governor be trusted?

What more evidence do the authorities need? The BNA is demonstrably failing in its regulatory central bank duty to supervise the private banking sector and the actions of the BNA Governor suggest that this dereliction of duty may not be accidental.

Massano has both historic and current conflicts of interest because of his close ties to, and actions on behalf of politically-exposed persons, which should disqualify him. And yet…

As current BNA Governor he is being allowed to demand a bail-out of over a billion US dollars of public money for a failing private bank for which he previously arranged more than two billion US dollars of public money and which is part-owned by those same PEPs.

He has used his position as BNA Governor to manipulate foreign exchange dealings to the known benefit of that same failing bank in which these PEPs have a financial interest.

His appointments to the administration of that private bank (amongst others), whose probity he is supposed to regulate, are the same cronies tarnished by their past actions in support of the PEPs with a financial interest in that bank.

Why is he bankrolling and interfering in the administration of a commercial bank that is failing because it squandered its operating capital by issuing unrecoverable unsecured loans suspected to have been directed to those same PEPS?

It would be impossible for any BNA governor not to know (or find proof) that the PEPs in question continue to help themselves to public funds through these supposedly commercial banks. Their playbook is so well-known: obtain unsecured loans via shell companies with fake nominal owners which then transfer the monies to other entities also secretly owned by the same PEPs.

In this way they drain the private banks’ financial reserves to near-bankruptcy, secure in the knowledge that a friendly regulator will simply order up more state funds to ensure the whole merry-go-round can keep on turning. If Massano is unaware of this, he is incompetent and should be removed. If he is aware, then he is complicit and should be removed.

Taken together, the actions of the current BNA Governor strongly indicate sufficient grounds for an immediate criminal investigation. At the very least, there is enough documented evidence to persuade any President serious about tackling corruption at the highest levels, to order an asset freeze and suspend all those involved from any public office until they may be cleared of wrongdoing. Otherwise, to the rest of the world, this is what it looks like: despite political promises of reform, Angola’s banking, legal and corporate systems are not fit for purpose and corrupt PEPs can still operate there with impunity, whether defrauding foreign partners to seize their assets or illegally-diverting public money into their own pockets.

Angola’s San Community under Threat from Burning Forests

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In many parts of Angola the end of the cooler, dry season known as ‘cacimbo’ is traditionally the right time for burning brush. Fire clears the land ready for planting ahead of the rainy season, produces the charcoal on which many families still depend for their cooking fuel, and sends wildlife into the path of hunters.

But unregulated and uncontrolled, this practise is one of the major factors leading to widespread deforestation in the most remote southeastern corner of Angola, where hundreds of kilometres of virgin forest are on fire, threatening the very existence of the San people.

The San, dubbed “Bushmen” by the European colonizers of the region, are the descendants of some of the most ancient peoples on Earth. Their forefathers have roamed the southern African forests for tens of thousands of years. To this day the San communities follow their ancestors’ tradition of living in harmony with Mother Earth. They are renowned for what Survival International calls “their intimate knowledge of the natural world and the delicate balance they have maintained for millennia with the environment”. They hunt with bows and arrows, gather the fruits of the earth and take only what is necessary to sustain life. Their way of life was once denigrated as primitive – nowadays it’s recognized as ecologically-aware. However, their continued existence is threatened by deforestation.

Some 12,000 San inhabit Kuando-Kubango, the country’s second largest province. Just like their ancestors over the centuries, today’s San eschew the settled agricultural or industrial lifestyles of their fellow Angolans, choosing to live semi-nomadic lives alongside but apart from their Bantu neighbours, foraging deep into the forests.

In Kuando-Kubango their natural habitat is being reduced to scorched earth. In the Ntope area the trees are gone. The Maboque is a tree that only grows in the tropical areas of southern Africa. Elephant and other herbivores such as impala and kudu eat its leaves, while apes and humans alike take nourishment from the bittersweet yellow fruit the trees produce at the end of the rainy season.

This area once rich with native Maboque trees is now a wasteland. There are a few scattered, improvised dwellings but they appear deserted until we are alerted to human presence by a hoarse voice, begging us for water. We have found Mutango, weakened by hunger, barely able to stir. The rest of the family are out, ranging far and wide, searching for food.

They pride themselves on their self-sufficiency: bush meat, maboque fruit and wild berries providing a large part of their children’s diet. Today the signs of malnourishment are all around. The few adults we meet are weak and frail, barely able to build their customary shelters, formed from branches and foliage.

“The trees have been cut down and everything burned to the ground,” they tell us. “We can’t hunt because the wildlife fled the fires; there’s no fruit, no honey, even roots are hard to find”. And they add: “We have never had any assistance in the way of food or medication”.

You don’t have to go far to find out why the situation has become so acute: while it’s not unusual for local Bantu communities to use slash-and-burn to obtain charcoal for fuel and to prepare the land for agriculture, they do so without any regulation, systematically clearing everything in their path.

And although the province is served by the mighty Zambezi river, with 77 identified hydrographic basins – a huge potential for irrigation – the settled communities survive by means of small-scale subsistence farming, dependent on the rains. When the rains fail, their harvests are depleted or ruined, forcing them to extend the range of the areas they cultivate.

According to the head of the Mbakita NGO, Pascoal Baptistiny, the main factors contributing to the decline (and potential extinction) of the San community in Kuando-Kubango are drought, slash-and-burn, restricted access to their former hunting grounds thanks to the enclosure of forested land into private estates by corrupt officials (including three former provincial governors) and clear-cutting by lumber companies.

China’s voracious appetite for timber has brought numerous foreign-owned lumber companies into the region. Such Chinese companies use local license-holders as legal fronts in a race to extract maximum advantage of the province’s old-growth forest. It has led to uncontrolled deforestation of large swathes of the countryside.

Regulating the lumber industry is the role of government, which could take immediate steps to review and reorganize the licensing of provincial, national and foreign interests in the lumber industry to prevent clear-cutting and demand a re-planting programme for the future. This would also be a first step to combatting the corruption which has seen licenses granted to provincial and central officials as well as their families, interested only in maximising their short-term financial gain.

The government also needs to take action to ensure the rights of the San people are respected and protected. For example, a “basic basket” of goods is distributed to other communities when times are hard – but not to the San.

According to Pascoal Baptistiny, there has been a lack of political will to do anything to help the San, who are increasingly leaving the province and migrating into Namibia and Zambia, because the Angolan government has yet to ratify the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 (the 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ Convention).

Convention 169 recognizes the need for special protection of minority indigenous peoples “who are unable to enjoy their fundamental human rights to the same degree as the rest of the population of the States in which they live…”. He says: “Until and unless this Convention is ratified by the Angolan government, in terms of advocacy we have no legal instrument on which to rely to defend their community.”

Maka Angola’s legal expert Rui Verde concurs that ILO Convention 169 is an important and fundamental legal instrument to ensure government protection and respect for Angola’s different ethnicities and cultures as well as their rights to the land and natural resources which allow for their self-determination.

Since the end of the civil war in 2002, Angola’s government has made it a priority to seek foreign investment to rebuild the country, diversify the economy and provide employment but they have failed in the process to consult local communities or devise appropriate environmental controls.

At a time of increasing concern over climate crisis, isn’t there a need to mobilize all sectors of Angolan society to take part in a national dialogue at every level to find solutions that will protect the environment for future generations? And shouldn’t the reliance of rural communities on slash-and-burn clearance of the patrimony of our forest lands be high on that agenda?

Given the lack of help in the past, it was a welcome surprise to hear the new Governor of Kuando-Kubango, Júlio Bessa, promise prompt action when he called us to discuss about the forest clearances and the plight of the San. He took on board the concerns expressed and agreed to send a mission into the areas we had visited to offer some support to the affected communities. He also demonstrated that he is open to dialogue with all concerned – villagers, San people and the local NGOs – to tackle the issue of the burning forests. Angola needs the same willingness to listen and act from its national government.

After the Portuguese version of this article was first published, governor Júlio Bessa backtracked on his pleasantries and willingness to engage in dialogue. He called us “stupid” on National Radio of Angola, the government’s mouthpiece. Governor Bessa called out our “stupidity” for not understanding that the San are a nomadic population, and that “they are exactly like the Indians of the Amazon [Forest], who also walk around naked”, and must be left on their own. “These people must not be used to prove that Angola has that many poor people. This is stupid. I repeat it is a stupidity, and it has irritated me a little”, said the governor who also called our reporting as “shameful”. He concluded that the San people “know how to survive on their own.”

Unveiling Corruption Is Indeed Donkey Work

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A Forbes article once obliged Isabel dos Santos by repeating her claim that she was Africa’s richest woman: a self-made billionaire who said she began her mercurial business career by selling eggs in the street on her way to school. 

Perhaps she did sell eggs, once upon a time though knowing the origins of her later seed capital does make you wonder who it was that owned the hens.  And I can guarantee there was no egg selling in the streets around Brook Green, London when the daughter of Angola’s then President was attending the US$ 15,000 a year fee-paying St. Paul’s Girls School.  

Isabel has an affinity for the British capital which is a favoured destination for the world’s money launderers. With her husband Sindiko Dokolo, she owns (via a shell company) at least one multi-million-dollar property in an exclusive gated community in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, thanks to a “publicly-aired planning dispute” which revealed the true owner to be Mrs Dokolo, aka the “billionaire daughter of an African kleptocrat”.

It isn’t hard to trace the origins of Isabel’s reputed ‘billions’ as Maka Angola has shown, repeatedly.  She owes it all to her father, José Eduardo dos Santos, who during his 38 years (1979-2017) as President of the Republic of Angola, used Angola’s oil wealth to enrich himself, his family and all those he needed to sustain him in power.

As Forbes journalists and others determined, Isabel’s fortune has “largely been derived from her political connections; she would emerge as the beneficiary of lucrative state contracts decreed by her father or receive chunks of companies wanting to invest in Angola.”

Not so, says Isabel over and over, though without providing any evidence to refute the allegations against her. Take for example her reaction to this article, which revealed that once again Isabel is taking money from the Angolan public purse, this time a loan funded by a German credit line intended for the Angolan government. The article reports that, in 2015, Isabel’s brewery obtained a 49.7 million euro loan from the state-owned BPC (the Banco de Poupança e Crédito), thanks to a line of credit set up by the German investment bank, the KfW IPEX-Bank for Angola.

Isabel’s reaction is to call the reporter, Rafael Marques de Morais, a “donkey incapable of understanding that the money does not come from public funds”.  She insists that the bank loan she took is not “public money”. 

Let us spell this out for her:  the BPC loan is funded by a German line of credit issued to the Angolan government and that line of credit is being repaid by the Angolan government. With public money. Fact.

Surely Isabel must realize, in spite of her entitled poor-little-rich-girl upbringing, that you can’t fool all the people all the time, no matter how many times you repeat a lie.  And she should know that donkeys are not so much dumb as stubborn.  Doing the ‘donkey work’ to reveal corruption by politically-exposed persons is why Maka Angola exists and it’s why insiders and whistleblowers are willing to pass on evidence of corruption for publication. 

Isabel states she “never used public funds” to get rich.  Really?  Then what about the Sonangol money which launched her acquisition of shares in the Portuguese oil company GALP?  Maka Angola has the paperwork from the 2006 contract between her BIV-registered offshore company Exem Africa Ltd and Sonangol.  Sonangol acquired 45% of Amorim Energia BV   (which in turn controlled 33.34% of GALP) via Esperaza Holding, registered as a Sonangol-owned company in the Netherlands.    Esperaza then transferred 40% of its GALP stock to Isabel’s company, Exem Africa.

Isabel was contractually obliged to pay for this acquisition in two stages:  Exem was supposed to give Sonangol the first 15% of the agreed cost upfront, amounting to 11.2 million Euros (US $12.5 million), with the balance comprising 63.8 million euros (US $71.5 million) to be paid later.

Ten years later, when her father named Isabel as Chair of the Board of Sonangol in 2016, Exem had yet to pay a single cent of the amount due.  Isabel apparently offered Sonangol a sum in Angolan kwanzas which insiders said bore no relation to the actual sum owed, infuriating Carlos Saturnino, who replaced her as head of Sonangol.   Saturnino demanded she pay the going rate for the shares, in foreign currency.

To this day Isabel has yet to provide any proof of any payment by Exem Africa to Sonangol for the GALP stock.

Insiders accuse the former President’s daughter of having benefited from an illegal transfer of state patrimony (oil revenue funds channelled through Sonangol) authorized by her father, the then President – a sum worth more than US $80 million which she has never paid back.  Even if she were to pay up now, Isabel clearly got her start from Angolan public funds.  Not to mention a 13 year (and counting) repayment holiday.

Sonangol, and in particular Manuel Vicente, who signed the stock-transfer contract with Isabel, should come clean.  Because nowhere in Sonangol’s published accounts is there any record of payment by Isabel for the Esperaza/Amorim/Galp stock.

At odds with Isabel’s PR campaign which presents her as someone who brings added value to any investment vehicle, Maka Angola has heard from a source in Portugal that her connection with GALP has made it harder to obtain investment for oil and gas projects in Mozambique and Angola.  “Some banks have turned GALP down precisely because of the presence of Isabel dos Santos, a Politically-Exposed Person, on the board,” says the source, “other banks would only offer a loan at elevated rates of interest because they have reason to fear that GALP’s link to Isabel dos Santos puts it at greater risk.”

Maka Angola legal expert Rui Verde says “Isabel dos Santos’s stock in GALP should be slapped with a lien or retention of title in favour of Sonangol until and unless her company pays off, in full, all the entire amount owed.”  Additionally, it should be noted that it was not ever legal for Sonangol, a state-owned company, to function as a private investment bank for the president’s family.”  In Rui Verde’s opinion,  “The transfer of stock to Isabel dos Santos should be decreed null and void and the stock should be immediately returned to Sonangol.”

The truth is that Angola is still unable to call to account the corrupt leaders who have robbed it blind.  Those in power today are crippled by the fear that any action against their former President could bring down the entire ruling party and lead to chaos.  This is what enables Angola’s pampered ‘Princesa’ to boast of her great expertise as an investor in Portugal when the whole world knows it wasn’t her money she invested and no expertise was required.

When there is documentary evidence that proves someone is a fraud and a liar, Maka Angola is not just happy to do the donkey work to make it public but will stubbornly continue to call for the corrupt to be brought to justice. Sadly for Isabel dos Santos, no matter how often she protests her innocence, the facts speak for themselves. 

‘Operation Thunderclap’: At Least Five Dead in Separatist Attack on Angolan Prison

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An armed attack on a prison in the north-eastern Angolan province of Lunda-Sul which resulted in the deaths of at least five people, has been blamed on a misguided attempt to free a self-styled independence leader. Responsibility for the attack is said to lie with a man calling himself “Commander Thunderclap” (*see below) who says it is the opening salvo in a liberation war for the independence of the Lundas. 

The diamond-rich region comprises twin provinces – North Lunda (Norte) and South Lunda (Sul), largely inhabited by descendants of the Tchokwe nation.  It is no stranger to separatism.  Local communities have long displayed discontent with Angola’s central government.  While politicians, generals and foreign interests have carved out immense fortunes over decades, the lot of local people has not improved since colonial times, leading to simmering resentment and a growing appetite for self-rule. 

Zero tolerance for separatism

The Angolan authorities are notorious for suppressing separatists.  Ten years ago, they briefly detained more than 270 people across Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, simply on suspicion of belonging to a movement called the Comissão do Manifesto Jurídico e Sociológico do Protectorado da Lunda-Tchokwé (the Lunda-Tchokwe Protectorate Sociological and Juridical Manifesto Commission).  Its leader, José Filipe Malakito, spent the next two years in jail for having dared call for independence for the Lundas. Thirty-seven of his colleagues were also detained for lengthy periods. 

Numerous instances of arbitrary detention for political reasons in the intervening years have only added to the simmering anger.

After Malakito was removed from circulation, another group appeared, the Movimento do Protectorado Lunda-Tchokwé (Lunda-Tchokwe Protectorate Movement) which staged peaceful street protests calling for autonomy. Whenever MPLT supporters gathered, the Armed Forces would crack down on them.  Two years ago, more than half the 80 identified members of the MPLT arrested during a meeting on May 24, 2017 were found guilty of disorderly assembly by a provincial court.  They were accused of waving firearms at their meeting but their leader, José Zecamutchima, decried the verdict as a farce saying that the protestors were peacefully holding up their ID cards when they were arrested en masse.

‘Thunderclap’

At the beginning of this year, a lowly petrol pump attendant, petty criminal and part-time amateur rap artist who had once served in the armed forces, appeared on social media calling himself the “military commander” of the Lunda-Tchokwe separatists and nominating October 30 as the start of armed rebellion against the central government in Luanda.  It earned “Commander Thunderclap” a spell in a Saurimo jail. 

However, come October 30, an attack was mounted.  The target was Luzia Jail, outside Saurimo.  The police report said five of the attackers died “in the attempt to free an un-named detainee”.  One of their number was gravely injured and a further 18 were arrested while three prison guards also suffered injuries.  The report said these “persons unknown” were armed with at least one AK rifle, machetes and spears. 

With 18 people in custody, the police ought to have some clue as to their identity (as should local lawyers as Angolan law gives detainees the right to legal representation).

The fact is the police were being coy.  

Maka Angola has learned that the young men who risked (and in at least five cases, lost) their lives were acolytes attempting to free the 30 year-old pump attendant who calls himself “Commander Thunderclap”. 

In a message allegedly smuggled out from his cell, ‘Thunderclap’ introduces himself as the founder and leader of a group he calls the ‘Revolutionary Front for the Integration and Sociological Independence of Lunda-Tchokwe’ (Frente Revolucionária para a Independência Sociológica e Integridade da Lunda-Tchokwé,  FRISILT), saying that though physically detained, spiritually he remains free and concerned only with liberating his people.

His Facebook page shows the “Commander” in profile, dressed in camouflage and holding a Kalashnikov (AK) aloft and for more than a year he has been posting calls for an armed uprising for the Lundas to secede from Angola.  However, it appears that no-one took him seriously nor believed him capable of mobilizing others to emulate the actions of those Angolan heroes who kicked off the fight for national liberation on February 4, 1961 by attacking a jail armed with little more than machetes. 

Farce, or serious threat to Angolan unity?

José Zecamutchima, who led the MPLT, told Maka Angola he knows some of those involved and tried to talk them out of doing anything violent but was insulted as “past his sell-by date”. 

“Trovoada [Thunderclap] was a conscript who deserted from the Angolan Armed Forces while stationed in Cabinda,” José Zecamutchima told us.   “He spent six months in jail in 2017 for armed robbery against stores owned by West Africans and pretty much as soon as he got out, he began talking about starting a war.”

Zecamutchima says there were about 30 in all involved in the attack on Luzia jail and their only weapons were machetes.  From what he has heard he believes eight young men died and another is in a serious condition

In addition to open letters to the Angolan and Portuguese Presidents calling for the return of pre-colonial lands to Tchokwe sovereignty, ‘Commander Thunderclap’ posted repeated threats on his Facebook page that a violent uprising would begin on October 30. A few dozen of his social media followers who commented on those posts also openly expressed their support for his “war”.  They weren’t the only ones who took note.

At the end of August, ‘Thunderclap’ revealed he was under investigation by Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service (Serviço de Investigação Criminal, SIC) and had been briefly detained.  That did not deter him.   On September 8, he published a warning that any armed soldiers and police officers would be considered fair game and would be killed, mercilessly. 

His public threats and appeal for a war to start on October 30 are incriminating in themselves:  an attempt to incite armed insurrection, further supported by the fact that his supporters launched their attack to free him on that very day.

This whole farrago may seem a storm in a teacup.  But the fact is that the “Thunderclap Affair” is further evidence of regional tensions in Angola that the central government may be taking too lightly.

One Angolan Armed Forces General, speaking to Maka Angola on condition of anonymity, says they have seen a sharp increase in those calling for armed uprising in the Lundas over the past ten years.

“There’s a similar level of discontent along many frontier provinces”, the General says.  “But unlike Cabinda, Cunene and the Dembos (Bengo), we have seen nothing to compare with the situation in the Lundas.” 

He acknowledges that the lack of any benefit to local communities from the extraction of mineral riches, along with political neglect and social exclusion, create pervasive despair which he admits is the extremists’ “best recruiter”.  His concern is that outside sources could take advantage of this widespread resentment to fuel instability, as has happened in other African countries such as Mali, Mozambique and Nigeria where global jihadi groups have armed separatists. 

Our military source is keen to warn would-be separatists against the misguided belief that they can take advantage of perceived disarray in the Angolan army.  “Don’t forget that Angolan military intelligence is highly efficient, and we can count on large numbers of Angolans with combat experience, thanks to four decades of civil war.”

There seems little chance that “Commander Thunderclap” will emerge from prison any time to soon to lead any such insurrection. 

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