THEY SHOULD DRIVE TESLA'S😈

For Angola’s Super Rich, It’s No Longer Cool to Drive a Ferrari



Henrique Almeida and Candido Mendes
Tue, September 27, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Toward the tail-end of Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s almost four-decade rule of Angola, Porsches, BMWs and even the occasional Ferrari meandered through the streets of downtown Luanda past legions of beggars.

Such public displays of affluence in one of the world’s most unequal nations are becoming less commonplace as the government intensifies a crackdown on graft, with many of the well-heeled trying to hide their wealth or pretending they were never really that rich after all.

“The market is tough,” said Kolly Villa, a luxury-car salesman in Luanda, the capital, who imports custom-made vehicles from the US to Angola. “People aren’t buying or using their own luxury cars because they’re afraid to go out on the street.”

Angola’s oil-fired economy boomed after a 27-year civil war ended in 2002, but the spoils largely ended up in the hands of a tiny elite with close ties to the former president. They included his daughter, Isabel, who became the continent’s richest woman with stakes in industries ranging from banking and cement to telecommunications and diamonds.

Rich Angolans who made their way to Portugal, the southwestern African nation’s former colonial power, established a reputation for living flashy lifestyles. Several bought multimillion-euro apartments and mansions in the seaside town of Cascais, and some residents blamed them for inflating real-estate prices. “You must think I’m Angolan,” became a common retort from those who felt they were being over-charged.

Then Joao Lourenco, a former army general, replaced Dos Santos in 2017 and unleashed an anti-corruption drive that’s targeted several members of his predecessor’s inner circle, and ostentatious displays of wealth became noticeably less prevalent. As Lourenco, 68, began a new five-year term this month, he pledged to intensify his campaign and spread wealth more evenly in a nation where the World Bank estimates that about half of the population of 33 million lives on less than $1.90 per day.

Corruption Probes

The government says it has already opened more than 3,000 corruption, money-laundering and other commercial probes since Lourenco came to power, and more than $20 billion worth of illicitly acquired assets have been seized in Angola and abroad.

Those targeted include Isabel dos Santos, who had her assets in Angola and Portugal frozen after an international media investigation dubbed the Luanda Leaks implicated her in several questionable business deals. She served as the chairwoman of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil company, during her father’s tenure and her net worth exceeded $2 billion. She’s denied wrongdoing and alleged that she is the victim of a political vendetta.

Jose Filomeno dos Santos, Isabel’s half-brother who ran Angola’s $5-billion sovereign wealth fund, was accused by Angola’s finance ministry of trying to siphon $1.5 billion from the central bank just days before his father stepped down as president. He was sentenced to five years in prison after a court found him guilty of taking part in an illegal transfer of $500 million from the central bank to an account in the UK.

At least three former ministers who served in Dos Santos’s cabinet have also been subjected to judicial inquiries. Dos Santos, who held power from 1979 to 2017, died in July at the age of 79.

Read more: Why Impoverished Angola Is Targeting a Billionaire: QuickTake

Paulo Carvalho, a sociology professor at Agostinho Neto University in Luanda, is among those who’ve observed distinct behavioral changes among the wealthy.

“Rich Angolans always had a tendency to flaunt their wealth in the face of others,” he said. “The fight against corruption forced many in the so-called elite to become more discreet.”

Alexandre Pacheco, founder of Luanda-based online real estate broker My Imovel, has seen a pick-up in demand for luxury properties after a prolonged recession, and also detected a shift in attitude among those shopping for homes worth more than $500,000.

“Most of the people who have the financial capacity to buy these properties ask others to do it for them,” he said.

Election Outcome

Opposition parties accuse Lourenco of using his anti-graft crusade as a smokescreen to distract from the country’s economic woes and settle political scores, and allege that the abuse of taxpayer funds remains rife. Public disenchantment over corruption, rampant poverty and unemployment saw support for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which has held power for almost half a century, fall to 51% in Aug. 24 elections -- the lowest level since the civil war ended.

Lourenco denies that prosecutions have been selective, and said he remains committed to raising living standards.

“The bodies of justice will proceed with their work in preventing and fighting corruption and impunity, which still exists,” he said in a Sept. 16 speech after being inaugurated for a second term.

Rich Angolans’ newfound penchant for austerity was absent from that ceremony --- dozens of Toyota Land Cruisers with tinted windows were seen leaving the venue in Luanda.

“Such displays of wealth, even if they have been tamed down, are no longer acceptable,” said Manuel Alves da Rocha, an economics professor at the Catholic University of Angola in Luanda, who has taught many of the nation’s top government officials. “The time has come to start caring for the rest of the population.”

ECOCIDE WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM
Waste from Angola’s Catoca diamond mine leaked into waterways last month

Angola mine leak causes 'unprecedented' pollution in Congo rivers, researchers say


KINSHASA,  (Reuters) - A suspected leak of heavy metals from a mine in northern Angola is causing an "unprecedented environmental catastrophe", affecting some 2 million people in Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers at Kinshasa University said on Friday.

Reuters | August 23, 2021 | 

Credit: Catoca Mining Company

Waste material from Angola’s biggest diamond mine leaked into a river last month, filling waterways with sediment before the breach was sealed, Sociedade Mineira de Catoca (Catoca Mining Company) said in a statement seen by Reuters on Monday.


Congolese researchers on Friday said pollution caused by a leak from a tailings dam, used to store waste mining material, had turned rivers red and caused fish to die in Congo’s southern Kasai province.

The researchers did not link the pollution to a specific mine.

Catoca said in a statement, dated Aug. 9 and seen by Reuters on Monday, that tailings were seen to have leaked into the Lova river on July 27 following a rupture in a spillway for the mine waste dam.

The company said it immediately sought to repair it, built two dykes to filter sediment out of the water and by Aug. 9 the breach was sealed.

It said it would provide local residents with baskets of basic goods to mitigate the impact of the leak on waterways.

The company’s website does not include any information on the tailings dam leak.

Catoca, a joint venture of Russian state-controlled diamond producer Alrosa and Angolan state diamond company Endiama, is one of the biggest diamond mines in the world and Angola’s top diamond producer, responsible for around 75% of national output.

Alrosa, which holds 41% of Catoca, declined to comment. Endiama, which also has a 41% stake in Catoca, did not respond to a request for comment.

(By Helen Reid, Hereward Holland and Polina Devitt; Editing by Barbara Lewis)

Catoca Diamond Mine, Angola - NASA Earth Observatory

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8928

In terms of surface area, the Catoca kimberlite pipe in Angola is the fourth-largest diamond-rich rock formation on Earth. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the Catoca diamond mine on June 21, 2001. In this false-color image, vegetation appears bright green, water appears dark blue, and bare ground appears beige-gray.

Catoca diamond mine - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catoca_diamond_mine

• Overview
• Production
• Geology

The Catoca diamond mine is the fourth largest diamond mine in the world, and is located in Angola. The mine is owned by a consortium of international mining interests, including Endiama (the state mining company of Angola) (32.8% ownership), Alrosa of Russia (32.8%), Odebrecht of Brazil (16.4%), and the Diamond Finance CY BV Group (16.8%). The mine is located on a kimberlite pipe.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T

Isabel dos Santos ordered to return $500 million in energy shares to Angola

Issued on: 30/07/2021 - 

Isabel dos Santos participates in a discussion at Bloomberg Global Business Forum at The Plaza Hotel on September 26, 2018 in New York City. © Mike Coppola, Getty Images via AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES


Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola's former president and Africa's onetime richest woman, must return to Angola her shares in Portugal's Galp energy firm worth 422 million euros ($500 million), an international arbitration court has ruled.

Dos Santos is accused of diverting billions of dollars from state companies during her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos's nearly 40-year rule of the oil-rich southern African nation.

The embattled ex-first daughter, whose business assets have been frozen since 2019, was ordered by a Dutch court this week to return shares worth $500 million to Angola's national Sonangol energy group, which she chaired until Lourenco took power.

The transaction under which Dos Santos acquired her stake in the oil and gas company Galp is "null and void", according to a copy of the ruling seen by AFP on Friday by the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI), which is part of the International Court of Arbitration.

After paying a 15 percent deposit from the bank account of another company in the British Virgin Islands, dos Santos allegedly paid the rest of the amount in Angola's local currency, worth little outside the country, rather than in euros as agreed on the sales contract, according to the NAI.

Santos's six-percent stake in Galp is part of a myriad of investments in Angola and former colonial ruler Portugal, worth about $3 billion according to Forbes magazine, that have been under scrutiny.

The court's decision -- dated July 23 and first reported by Dutch media late Thursday -- said that the 2006 purchase of the shares, acquired through a company owned by dos Santos' late husband Exem Energy, was illegal.

Dos Santos had consistently denied any wrongdoing and denounced all accusations as a politically motivated witch hunt.

Exem's lawyers intend to appeal the decision "with the competent court".

"In this arbitral award the political narrative clearly overrides the legal analysis," the company said in a statement emailed to AFP on Friday.

One of Sonangol's lawyers, Yas Banifatemi, told Dutch media there was "nothing political" in the court's decision.

"The arbitration court has judged that Isabel dos Santos enriched herself with money stolen from Angolan people," said Banifatemi, cited in Dutch daily newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad.

'The princess'

President Joao Lourenco has vowed to crack down on corruption since dos Santos retired in 2017, removing his predecessor's cronies from key positions and probing the former regime for alleged graft.

He has targeted several members of the dos Santos family, including Isabel and her younger brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos, sentenced to five years in prison for diverting oil revenues last year.

Isabel is the eldest daughter of Angola's ex-president, accused of ruling the country with an iron fist, leaving a legacy of poverty and nepotism.

The British-educated billionaire businesswoman has faced several allegations of plundering the public purse and funnelling the money abroad.

In a trove of 715,000 files released in January 2020 by the award-winning New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and dubbed the "Luanda Leaks," dos Santos was accused of syphoning state funds from the oil-rich, but impoverished country into offshore assets.

Nicknamed "the princess" in Angola, she was accused of amassing her vast fortune thanks to the backing of her authoritarian father.

In Portugal, in addition to Galp, she has major bank stakes and has a controlling share of a Portuguese cable TV and telecom firm.

In December 2019, Angola's prosecutors froze the bank accounts and assets owned by her and her Congolese husband Sindika Dokolo, who died last year, a move she described as a groundless political vendetta.

Dos Santos became Africa's richest woman after Forbes magazine named her the continent's first female billionaire in 2013. She lost that title when her assets were frozen.

(AFP)

How U.S. Firms Helped Africa's Richest Woman Exploit Her Country's Wealth
LONG READ DOS SANTOS ANGOLA CORRUPTION
Michael Forsythe, Kyra Gurney, Scilla Alecci and Ben Hallman,
The New York Times•January 20, 2020 
 

Ana Gomes, a former European Parliament member who 

has accused Isabel dos Santos of money laundering, in

 Lisbon, Portugal, Jan. 8, 2020. (Ana Brigida/The New York Times)

LISBON, Portugal — It was the party to be seen at during the Cannes Film Festival, where being seen was the whole point. A Swiss jewelry company had rented out the opulent Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, drawing celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell and Antonio Banderas. The theme: “Love on the Rocks.”

Posing for photos at the May 2017 event was Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, then Angola’s president. Her husband controls jeweler De Grisogono through a dizzying array of shell companies in Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands.

But the lavish party was possible only because of the Angolan government. The country is rich in oil and diamonds but hobbled by corruption, with grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy and a high infant mortality rate. A state agency had sunk more than $120 million into the jewelry company. Today, it faces a total loss.

Dos Santos, estimated to be worth over $2 billion, claims she is a self-made woman who never benefited from state funds. But a different picture has emerged under media scrutiny in recent years: She took a cut of Angola’s wealth, often through decrees signed by her father. She acquired stakes in the country’s diamond exports, its dominant mobile phone company, two of its banks and its biggest cement maker, and partnered with the state oil giant to buy into Portugal’s largest petroleum company.

Now, a trove of more than 700,000 documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and shared with The New York Times, shows how a global network of consultants, lawyers, bankers and accountants helped her amass that fortune and park it abroad. Some of the world’s leading professional service firms — including the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co. and PwC — facilitated her efforts to profit from her country’s wealth while lending their legitimacy.

The empire she and her husband built stretches from Hong Kong to the U.S., comprising over 400 companies and subsidiaries. It encompasses properties around the world, including a $55 million mansion in Monte Carlo, Monaco, a $35 million yacht and a luxury residence in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on a seahorse-shaped artificial island.

Among the businesses was the Swiss jewelry company, which records and interviews reveal was led by a team recruited from Boston Consulting. They ran it into the ground. Under their watch, millions of dollars in Angolan state funds helped finance the annual parties on the French Riviera.

When Boston Consulting and McKinsey signed on to help restructure Sonangol, Angola’s state oil business, they agreed to be paid in an unusual way — not by the government but through a Maltese company dos Santos owned. Then her father put her in charge of Sonangol, and the government payments soared, routed through another offshore company, this one owned by a friend of hers.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, now called PwC, acted as her accountant, consultant and tax adviser, working with at least 20 companies controlled by her or her husband. Yet there were obvious red flags as Angolan state money went unaccounted for, according to money-laundering experts and forensic accountants who reviewed the newly obtained documents.

When the Western advisory firms came into Angola almost two decades ago, they were viewed by the global financial community as a force for good: bringing professionalism and higher standards to a former Portuguese colony ravaged by years of civil war. But ultimately they took the money and did what their clients asked, said Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, an international politics professor at Oxford who studies Angola.

“They are there as all-purpose providers of whatever these elites are trying to do,” he said. “They have no moral status — they are what you make of them.”

Now, more than two years after her father stepped down after 38 years as Angola’s strongman president, dos Santos is in trouble.

Last month, an Angolan court froze her assets in the country as part of a corruption investigation, along with her husband’s and those of a Portuguese business associate. The Angolan attorney general claimed the couple were responsible for more than $1 billion in lost state funds, with particular focus on De Grisogono and Sonangol.

Dos Santos and her husband could face years in prison if convicted, according to the office of Angola’s president, João Lourenço. At the heart of the inquiry: $38 million in payments from Sonangol to a Dubai shell company hours after Angola’s new president announced her firing. Dos Santos’ half brother is also facing corruption charges for helping to transfer $500 million from Angola’s sovereign wealth fund. The asset freeze came soon after ICIJ reporting partners asked the government about transactions in the documents.

In an interview with the BBC, dos Santos, 46, denied any wrongdoing and called the inquiry a “political persecution.” “My companies are funded privately, we work with commercial banks, our holdings are private holdings,” she said.

Her husband, Sindika Dokolo, 47, suggested the new government was scapegoating them. “It does not attack the agents of public companies accused of embezzlement, just a family operating in the private sector,” he told Radio France Internationale, another ICIJ partner.

Global banks including Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, bound by strict rules about politically connected clients, largely declined to work with the family in recent years, the documents show.

“These guys hear about Isabel and they run like the devil from the cross,” Eduardo Sequeira, head of corporate finance for Fidequity, a Portuguese firm that manages many of dos Santos’ companies, wrote in a 2014 email after Spanish bank Santander turned down work with her.

Consulting companies, far less regulated than banks, readily embraced her business. American advisory firms market their expertise in bringing best practices to clients around the world. But in their quest for fees, several have worked for authoritarian or corrupt regimes in places like China or Saudi Arabia. McKinsey’s business in South Africa was decimated by its partnership with a subcontractor tied to a political scandal that took down the country’s president.

The new leaks show the pattern repeating itself in Angola, where invoices point to tens of millions of dollars going to the firms. They agreed to be paid for Angolan government work by shell companies — tied to dos Santos and her associates — that were in offshore locations long used to avoid taxes, hide illicit wealth and launder money. The arrangement allowed her to keep a large portion of the state funds, the records show.

(The documents, called the Luanda Leaks after the Angolan capital, include emails, slide presentations, invoices and contracts. They came to the ICIJ through the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, a Paris-based advocacy and legal group.)

PwC, based in London, said it was investigating its dealings with dos Santos and would stop working with her family. Boston Consulting said it took steps, when hired, “to ensure compliance with established policies and avoid corruption and other risks.” McKinsey called the allegations against dos Santos “concerning,” and said it wasn’t doing any work now with her or her companies.

‘Shadow Management’

De Grisogono, an upstart Swiss jewelry company, was on life support. Its business had never fully recovered from the global financial crisis, and by 2012, it was deeply in debt.

Dokolo, dos Santos’ husband, seemed to offer a way out. He teamed up with Sodiam, the Angolan state diamond marketer, in a 50-50 venture set up in Malta that took over the jeweler. The state enterprise eventually pumped more than $120 million into the business, acquiring equity and buying off debt, the records indicate. Documents show that shortly after the acquisition, Dokolo put in $4 million, an amount he had gotten from a “success fee” — drawn from the Sodiam money and shunted through a shell company in the British Virgin Islands — for closing the deal.

Dokolo, through his law firm, said he had initially invested $115 million and “has subsequently invested significantly more into the business,” but that could not be verified in the documents.

Flush with Angolan government money, the Geneva jeweler hired the Boston Consulting Group, an American management company with offices in more than 50 countries.

In 2012, according to the documents, a Lisbon-based team at the firm took a central role in helping to run De Grisogono — “shadow management” as John Leitão, a Boston Consulting employee who would become the jeweler’s chief executive, said in a November interview in Lisbon.

The consulting firm, however, said its employees worked only on three specific projects, ending its involvement in early 2013.

By that year, the consultants had started leaving the firm to join the jeweler, eventually occupying the positions of chairman, chief financial officer and chief operating officer alongside Leitão.

He said in the interview that the consultants had inherited “a total mess.” But under his watch, the company, with boutiques in London, New York and Paris, went deeper into the red, despite an initial uptick in sales, documents show.

De Grisogono had a run of bad luck, including economic pressures affecting Russian oligarchs and Saudi sheikhs who had been big customers, Leitão said. Yet many rich patrons, including dos Santos and her husband, would take jewelry and wristwatches without paying for them up front, the documents show. Marketing expenses also shot up — 42% during Leitão’s first year to $1.7 million, with the increase going to the Cannes party, according to an internal presentation.

Dokolo was unapologetic about spending big on parties. “You tell me what major luxury brand spends less than this on promotion to become a global brand,” he told the French radio service. In an interview with BBC, dos Santos said she was not a stakeholder in De Grisogono, though several emails and documents call that into question, indicating she had an ownership interest in the Maltese companies controlling it.

The jeweler gave the couple an ability to better market Angolan diamonds. Dokolo already controlled the rights to more than 45% of the country’s diamond sales through a company that bought uncut gems, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in income, according to the Angolan president’s office.

Dokolo’s lawyers said he aimed to integrate the country’s diamond industry, “from mining to polishing to retail sales.”

The Angolan people did more than pay dearly for a European jewelry company. They paid with money borrowed at a 9% annual interest rate from Banco BIC, an Angolan lender where dos Santos owns a 42.5% stake. The government will have to repay some $225 million, according to the Angolan president’s office. The loans had been guaranteed by dos Santos’ father.

For all the money it put in, Sodiam never exercised any management control of the jeweler and never recouped any of its investment. Now, Sodiam officials want out, and the business is for sale.

“It is strange,” said Eugenio Bravo da Rosa, Sodiam’s new chairman, speaking of the man he replaced, who had signed off on the investment. “I can’t believe a person would start a business and let its partner run the business with total power to make all the decisions.”

Striking Oil

In 2016, Sonangol, Angola’s state oil company, was in crisis after a drop in market prices. One former Boston Consulting employee described a company in an “absolutely chaotic” state. The Angolan president fired the company’s board and appointed his daughter, Isabel dos Santos, as chairwoman that June. Boston Consulting was helping Sonangol come up with a “road map” to restructure.

Dos Santos had a history with the company. A decade earlier, she and her husband made millions partnering with Sonangol and a Portuguese businessman to invest in a Lisbon gas company, Galp Energia. Their stake came courtesy of the Angolan government — through an $84 million loan from Sonangol, documents show. Their share in Galp is now worth about $800 million.

The former Boston Consulting employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that dos Santos — the president’s eldest child — was able to get things done that other executives could not because she wasn’t susceptible to pressure.

“We’re very committed to transparency,” dos Santos told Reuters at the time. “We’re very committed to improving our profits at Sonangol and to improving our organization.”

But transparency went only so far. More than half a year before she was named chairwoman, her father signed off on a decree drafted at the couple’s law firm, records show, that led to the awarding of $9.3 million to a Maltese company to oversee Sonangol’s restructuring. The business, Wise Intelligence Solutions, was owned by the couple and run by a close associate, Mário Leite da Silva, De Grisogono’s former chairman. Boston Consulting came on board, followed by McKinsey, with the Maltese firm acting as their manager.

Boston Consulting and other advisers billed for only about half of what Wise received from the Angolan treasury, receipts and invoices show, even though the Maltese company had only limited expertise of its own. Wise “does not have the human resources and specific know-how,” its Maltese accountant said in a March 2016 email. Dos Santos disputed this, with her law firm saying Wise had “technical expertise.”

After she took charge of Sonangol, the payments to the offshore companies would surge even higher.

In May 2017, Wise was replaced as project manager by a company in Dubai owned by one of her friends. It issued a flurry of invoices later that year, some with the barest of details. One of them, simply marked “Expenses May-September 2017,” carried a charge of more than 470,000 euros (over $520,000). These invoices account for the $38 million Sonangol paid to the Dubai company in the hours after dos Santos was fired on Nov. 15, 2017.

The Sonangol account was with the Portuguese arm of Banco BIC, where she was the biggest shareholder. Shunned by global banks, the couple increasingly relied on the Angolan lender, which has a big office in Lisbon steps from her apartment. In 2015, Portuguese regulators said the bank had failed to monitor money flowing from Angola to European companies linked to her and her associates, concluding that the lender lacked internal controls.

“Paying huge and dubious consulting fees to anonymous companies in secrecy jurisdictions is a standard trick that should sound all alarm bells,” said Christoph Trautvetter, a forensic accountant based in Berlin who worked as an investigator for KPMG, a global business advisory firm.

Days before the invoices were issued, the Sonangol executive who would have approved them was fired, replaced by a relative of dos Santos, the documents show. The managing director of the Dubai company, Matter Business Solutions DMCC, was her frequent associate da Silva.

Months later, Carlos Saturnino, dos Santos’s successor as Sonangol’s head, publicly accused her of mismanagement, saying her tenure was marked by conflicts of interest, tax avoidance and excessive reliance on consultants. He also said she had approved $135 million in consulting fees, with most of that going to the Dubai shell company.

“We have there some situations of money laundering, some of them of doing business with herself,” Hélder Pitta Grós, Angola’s attorney general, said in an interview with ICIJ partners.

Dos Santos, speaking with the BBC, said the Dubai company supervised work for Sonangol by Boston Consulting, McKinsey, PwC and several other Western firms. When asked about the invoices, she said she was unfamiliar with them but insisted the expenses were legitimate, charged at “the standard rate” under a contract approved by Sonangol’s board.

“This work was extraordinarily important,” she added, saying that Sonangol cut its costs by 40%.

Her lawyers said the $38 million was “for services that had already been provided and delivered by consultants in accordance with the contract.”

By late 2017, Boston Consulting was winding down its work on the project, which ended that November. McKinsey and PwC declined to comment.

The consultants’ involvement with dos Santos extended far beyond the Swiss jeweler and Sonangol. McKinsey, for example, provided advice on a Portuguese engineering firm she had just acquired and the Angolan mobile phone company where she served as chairwoman, documents show.

Two of the “big four” accounting firms, PwC and KPMG, did consulting work for Urbinveste, another thinly staffed company she owned that acted as a public works contractor in Angola. It oversaw projects — such as road and port design and urban redevelopment — worth hundreds of millions of dollars, some set to be financed with loans from Chinese banks and built by Chinese state-owned companies. KPMG also audited at least two companies she owned in the country. The firm said that in Angola, it performs “additional due diligence procedures” for all the businesses it audits.

The other two major accounting firms, Deloitte and Ernst & Young, now known as EY, did work for companies tied to her as well.

Accounting firms in the European Union, where much of dos Santos’ business empire was located, are bound by the same rules banks are, requiring them to report suspicious activity. One firm in particular, PwC, had a broad view into the inner workings of dos Santos’ empire.

The Accountant

Dos Santos had a long history with PwC. In the early 1990s, fresh out of King’s College London, she took a job with Coopers & Lybrand, soon to merge to become PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Her top money manager, da Silva, whose assets in Angola were frozen last month, was also a PwC alum. And when dos Santos took over Sonangol, she brought in a PwC partner, Sarju Raikundalia, as its finance head. The payments to Dubai in November 2017 happened on his watch before he, too, was fired. Neither of the businessmen responded to requests for comment.

PwC not only audited the books of her far-flung shell companies, but also provided her and Dokolo’s companies with tax advice and did consulting work for Sonangol.

Like Boston Consulting, PwC was paid by Wise Intelligence for its Angola work, and it audited the financial statements of the Maltese holding companies that controlled the Swiss jeweler.

In 2014, PwC accountants in Malta had a problem. As they prepared annual financial statements for Victoria Ltd., one of the Maltese companies that controlled De Grisogono, they wrote in a draft that the ultimate owners were Dokolo and the Angolan government. But Antonio Rodrigues, an executive at Fidequity, objected — the couple had been facing increasing media scrutiny after a 2013 Forbes article examined the origins of their wealth. Such information, he wrote, should not “be mentioned.”

“Noted — we will discuss internally and revert,” a PwC accountant replied. The language was removed.

PwC accountants also noticed there was no paperwork to account for millions of dollars in loans being pumped into the Maltese holding companies and De Grisogono, according to emails.

Robert Mazur, who was an anti-money-laundering investigator for the U.S. Customs Service, reviewed the PwC financial statements at the ICIJ’s request, along with email exchanges between the accountants and dos Santos’ money managers.

“The accountants and financial service providers involved in these transactions should have seriously considered filing a suspicious transaction report,” he said.

When presented with the ICIJ’s findings, PwC said it would not comment on specific projects, citing client confidentiality, but said it was ending its work with dos Santos. “In response to the very serious and concerning allegations that have been raised,” the firm said, “we immediately initiated an investigation and are working to thoroughly evaluate the facts and conclude our inquiry.”

As for dos Santos’ assets, the bulk of her fortune is now outside Angola, much of it in tax and secrecy havens where it will be hard to pry loose.

Ana Gomes, a former European Parliament member, filed a complaint in November in Portugal alleging that dos Santos laundered money through Banco BIC. Gomes said that the network of professional service firms had enabled dos Santos to move her money out of Angola and into legitimate businesses in Europe and elsewhere.

“They are part of a system of finding the safest landing for all the assets that are siphoned off,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=DOS+SANTOS

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ANGOLA

EE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CORRUPTION

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=OIL

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ANGOLA

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=AFRICA

 

For the first time in decades, Angolan giraffes now populate a park in Angola

July 11, 20234:52 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

By 

Megan LimTranscript

Giraffes wait in a truck before they are unloaded at Iona National Park in Angola.

Casey Crafford/Courtesy of African Parks

Fourteen Angolan giraffes walk into a truck ... and then travel more than 800 miles to their historical homeland, where they had been locally extinct for decades. The migrant giraffes rode unsedated for more than 36 hours this week from Namibia to their new home in Iona National Park, in Angola.

Who are they?

• These 14 juvenile giraffes come from a private game farm in Namibia. At an estimated 2-3 years old, they stand about 3.5 meters high. (That's roughly 11 1/2 feet tall.)
• Giraffes' height and plant-based diet means they play an important role in managing ecological balance and pollinating trees and shrubs.
• Giraffe populations in general have been on a decline due to "habitat loss, poaching, and other human-induced factors" according to African Parks.

What's the big deal?

• It's a logistical feat years in the making to arrange the transfer of animals this large. Once herded, they had to be loaded into a specially designed truck, and then driven very carefully across national borders to their final home – not to mention the politics involved in getting the government support and permits needed for the endeavor.
• It's a step toward restoring biodiversity at the parks. Thirty years of civil war in the region took its toll, so the return of these giraffes is also symbolic of recovery.
• The Giraffe Conservation Foundation estimates an Africa-wide population of about 117,000 giraffes. That's one giraffe for every four elephants, for context. With proper protection by the national parks, hopefully that number grows

What are people saying? Stephanie Fennessy, executive director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, spoke to NPR's Adrian Florido about the initiative.

On what happened to the giraffes in Angola:

They used to live in Angola, Namibia, Botswana and parts of Zambia. But during the civil unrest and civil war in Angola, giraffes are really easy animals to poach, and there's a lot of meat on them. So they were really war fodder and went extinct during the civil unrest in the country.

On the importance of returning these giraffes to their native territory:

I mean, obviously, any animal is important for biodiversity and for conservation and to have the right mix of animals in the country. So giraffes are landscape shapers, they're pollinators, so they're an important part of the ecosystem. But it's also obviously a prestigious project. I mean, Angola without Angolan giraffes sounds a little bit ridiculous, doesn't it?

On their release into their new habitat:

It's always amazing to see giraffes put their first steps into a new environment, where they have been locally extinct for a long time. I mean, it's really emotional. Obviously, the move has been really stressful years in the making. We started with feasibility studies basically two years ago. So when it finally happens, it's just a big relief and you're exhilarated. It's really, really exciting. And yeah, the giraffes are doing well. We tagged most of them with the GPS satellite tracker, so I can sit now here in my office and look where they move and they are just exploring their new habitat and finding their feet.

So what now?

Now that Angola is peaceful again, conservationists hope this move is just the beginning of efforts to reintroduce wildlife — here and at other African parks. These 14 giraffes will need to be monitored to ensure they're thriving, but there are ongoing discussions on bringing other animals into the park. "Fourteen is a great start," says Fennessy. "But to really have a feasible, satellite population, it would probably be helpful to bring some more. But let's first see how these ones go and then be taken from there."

ANGOLA

Tackling one of the world's highest teenage pregnancy rates, to give girls a better future

22 March 2022

Stela Varela, 28, is an activist for the Youth Support Centre, which is sponsored by the Safeguard Young People (SYP) programme in Huila, Angola. © UNFPA Angola

MITCHA NEIGHBORHOOD, Lubango – “I have had doors closed in my face many times, but my desire to bring knowledge to young people and adolescents in order to avoid unwanted pregnancy has no end,” said Stela Varela, 28, an activist for the Youth Support Centre (CAJ) and a beneficiary of the Safeguard Young People (SYP) programme.

I have had doors closed in my face many times, but my desire to bring knowledge to young people and adolescents to avoid unwanted pregnancy has no end.

Ms. Varela applies the knowledge she has acquired in her seven years as an activist in her neighbourhood of Bairro da Mitcha, on the outskirts of the city of Lubango, in the province of Huíla. Helping her community – especially girls and young women – fills her with pride.

Young women contributing to a better world

The biggest difficulty she faces is a lack of willingness among women to discuss the challenges of unintended pregnancy. It is not uncommon for her to be rejected when approaching a community to raise awareness on the negative effects of teenage pregnancy, for instance, or for mothers to refuse to let their teenaged daughters attend her behaviour change lectures.

I'm not going to give up on the girls.

While a lack of information and education may be the root cause that limits parents from being able to talk openly with their teenaged children about sexual and reproductive health, Ms. Varela remains undeterred. “I'm not going to give up on the girls. Getting them to participate in my lectures is my biggest challenge,” she said.

Students participating in an SYP-sponsored training session. © UNFPA Angola

Challenging one of the world's highest teen pregnancy rates

Angola has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. With a contraceptive prevalence rate of 14 per cent and an unmet need for family planning among girls aged 15-19 of 43 per cent, teenage pregnancies continue to be taboo. This is the reason for the silence she experiences from the families she approaches in Mitcha's neighbourhoods.

Underlying factors for the high rate of teen pregnancies include limited knowledge of family planning, inadequate availability of commodities, limited access to skilled health workers, and insufficient household resources allocated to sexual and reprodutive health. Teen pregnancy increases the existing vulnerability of girls, as pregnancy is often an impediment to continuing education, exemplified by the low literacy rates of only 37 per cent for young women aged 15 to 24.

At a local school, Ms. Varela leads a youth empowerment session, sponsored and monitored by the Safeguard Young People programme, with girls aged between 11 and 23 years old. © UNFPA Angola

The country has 10 million girls and women of reproductive age and, although 75 per cent of girls attend primary school, this proportion drops to around 16 per cent at secondary education level, which coincides with the age of first menstruation. High fertility rates and high levels of teenage pregnancy increase the risk of maternal mortality.

In this context, behaviour change interventions are key to empowering young women and men to make better decisions to protect themselves. The SYP programme in Angola will reach 60,000 youths with training on sexual and reproductive health, trauma resilience and job skills, while providing an enabling environment by strengthening medical posts and training for health professionals.
Working with SYP

Through UNFPA's Safeguarding Young People (SYP) programme, sponsored by the Netherlands and implemented in partnership with the Government of Angola, Ms. Varela participates in youth empowerment sessions with girls aged between 11 and 23 years old at schools. The programme was designed to address the sexual and reproductive health needs and reproductive rights of adolescents and youth.

My biggest dream as an activist is to be able to see these girls I work with today have a better future.

SYP empowers adolescents and youth to lead healthy lives, protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV, unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion, early marriage, GBV and harmful practices. SYP promotes inclusion, gender equality norms and protective behaviours.

“My biggest dream as an activist is to be able to see these girls I work with today have a better future. [To see them] graduate, have a good academic background, get married and set up their homes,” says Ms. Varela.

Angola's Lourenco to be sworn in after disputed win

Wed, September 14, 2022 


Angolan President Joao Lourenco is to be sworn in for a second term on Thursday amid tight security after a disputed electoral win last month.

The inauguration will be held on the historic palm tree-lined Praca da Republica square in the centre of the capital, Luanda.

Large numbers of police and military forces patrolled the streets ahead of the ceremony, AFP correspondents saw -- a presence the main opposition party said aimed at stifling dissent.

"This setup aims to intimidate citizens who want to demonstrate against the election results on the day of the inauguration of a president without legitimacy," the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) said in a statement.


Several heads of state and government, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, are expected to be in attendance.

Lourenco, 68, returned to power after the August 24 vote gave his Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) a thin majority, winning just 51.17 percent of the votes.

The vote was to choose members of parliament, where the largest party automatically selects the president.

It was the MPLA's poorest showing in the oil-rich African country it has controlled since independence from Portugal in 1975.

UNITA -- a former rebel movement which fought a bitter 27-year civil war against the MPLA government -- made significant gains, earning 43.95 percent of the vote, up from 26.67 percent in 2017.

Opposition parties and civic groups say the vote was marred by irregularities.

UNITA disputed the results in court but its appeal was tossed out.

"Tomorrow I will stay at home. There are too many police forces around town," Joao, a high school student who only gave his first name, said at a bus stop on the outskirts of Luanda.

- 'President for all' -

Under its charismatic leader Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, UNITA has proved popular in urban areas and among young voters clamouring for economic change.

It did particularly well in the capital, where it won a majority for the first time.

The MPLA instead lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority with its seats dropping to 124 from 150.

Lourenco struck a conciliatory tone after the vote, pledging to promote "dialogue" and be the "president of all Angolans".

But Costa Junior has said he will skip the inauguration and promised protests against the result of the vote, but has said his party will join the new parliament.

Foreign observers from other parts of Africa praised the peaceful conduct of the polls but raised concerns over press freedom and the accuracy of the electoral roll.

The former general first came to power in 2017 when he took over from long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who bequeathed a country deep in recession and riddled by corruption and nepotism.

Lourenco swiftly turned on his predecessor, launching an anti-graft campaign targeting his family and friends, which critics say was a political stunt.

He also embarked on an ambitious reform programme to lure foreign investors and diversify the economy.

But that has so far failed to brighten the prospects of many of Angola's 33 million people who are mired in poverty.

Dos Santos died in Spain in July. State funerals for the late strongman were held in August in the same square where Lourenco is to be sworn in.

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Joao Lourenco: Angola's reformist leader back in driving seat

Wed, September 14, 2022 


A general who became a graft buster and turned on his political patron, Angolan President Joao Lourenco will be sworn in for a second term on Thursday but faces dwindling popularity in a country struggling with problems.

Nicknamed JLo, the 68-year-old secured a new five-year tenure in the tightest-ever vote held in the oil-rich country.

Lourenco leads the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which has ruled since independence from Portugal in 1975.

In the August 24 ballot, the MPLA suffered its worst performance while its long-term rival, UNITA, surged.

Lourenco's victory was declared just 24 hours after he buried his predecessor, long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July.


Handpicked by dos Santos, Lourenco took the helm in 2017. That year his party won with a comfortable 61 percent of the vote. This time he notched up just 51 percent.

He had promised sweeping economic reforms and a drive against graft.

But the election outcome reflected fading support for the historic ruling party, especially among young people clamouring for jobs and a better life.
- Political purgatory -

Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco was born in Lobito in western Angola.

As a young man, he fought the colonial power Portugal and then after independence took part in the civil war that erupted between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels.


Lourenco studied in the former Soviet Union, which trained many rising young African nationalists during decolonisation.

He became political chief of the armed wing of the MPLA in the civil war -- a Cold War proxy conflict that drew in Cuban forces to fight alongside the MPLA, while CIA-backed militias did battle against them.

The ex-artillery general ascended through the MPLA hierarchy, leading the party in parliament before becoming deputy speaker.

Yet his ambition almost ended his career.

Unable to hide his angling for the top job, he was sidelined by dos Santos around the turn of the century.

In 2014, he was brought back from the cold -- he was appointed defence minister and three years later eased himself into the top job.

- Anti-graft drive -

After winning the 2017 elections, Lourenco quickly turned on his predecessor, starting an anti-corruption drive to recoup the billions allegedly embezzled by dos Santos' family.

Inheriting an economy deep in recession, he launched ambitious reforms to diversify government revenue and privatise state-owned firms.

Lourenco has trumpeted his successes, but many of Angola's 33 million people still wallow in poverty.

His anti-graft push has also been criticised as selective and politically motivated, fuelling divisions within the MPLA.

Dos Santos's death worsened his woes, triggering a public spat with the veteran revolutionary leader's children -- several of whom face graft investigations.

Even so, Lourenco's change in tack from the previous regime has won praise abroad.

He has become the go-to mediator in Africa -- dealing with the crisis in the Central Africa Republic or brokering talks between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

He is married to Ana Dias, a former planning minister who also represented Angola at the World Bank. They have six children.

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