Off the Rails: Angola's SGR Scandal

Off the Rails: Angola’s SGR Scandal

By Rafael Marques de Morais

For two decades under former President dos Santos, Angola repeatedly awarded multi-million-dollar contracts for complex projects to ‘johnny-come-lately’ companies with no track record. Invariably these were shell companies set up by Dos Santos cronies that never had the wherewithal to deliver on their promises. It was a scam by which the state kleptocrats diverted public funds into their own bank accounts. Under reformist President João Lourenço, things are supposed to have changed. But have they?

An investigation by Maka Angola into a billion-dollar deal for the supply and maintenance of locomotives for the National Institute of Angolan Railways suggests the authorities may need to take a much closer look at what, if anything, they got for their money.

We focus on one of three contracts from May 2015, all signed on the same day on behalf of the Angolan government by the then Secretary of State for Transport, Mário Domingues, and the legal proprietor of AEnergia S.A., Ricardo Filomeno Duarte Leitão Machado, a Portuguese national who owned a 99.9% majority share of the company.

One of these contracts, worth 500 million US dollars, was for the rebuilding, modernization and adaptation of the railway maintenance yards in the cities of Luanda, Lobito, Huambo and Lubango.

In 2013, the Ministry of Transport had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with General Electric to get Angola’s railway system up to date and working again. For two decades under former President dos Santos, Angola repeatedly awarded multi- million-dollar contracts for complex projects to ‘johnny-come-lately’ companies with no track record

Two years later, AEnergy presented itself as GE’s business partner to draw up and sign three contracts to turn the plans in the Memorandum into reality. The very next day, AEnergy submitted its invoice for an advance of US $75 million against future works and, surprisingly, the invoice was paid straight away – before any of the required checks and balances had been effected.

The contract contained a stipulation (in Clause 20) that it would only take effect once it had been reviewed and signed off by the Tribunal de Contas (the national audit office) and the Angolan President. Neither had done so.

AEnergy’s owner, Ricardo Machado, says: “We were advised by the Ministry of Transport that it had submitted the paperwork to the national audit office in good time, in compliance with the legal requirements it was obliged to observe.”

Mr Machado say that the US $75 million received by AEnergy was an advance against expenses: “Bearing in mind the requirements of the entities that were financing the work, the government agreed to make an immediate first payment so as not to delay the process of manufacturing the priority equipment needed for both the new and updated locomotives.”

He says the problem was that financing of the project was due to come from GE Capital (part of the General Electric group) as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding, but the money was simply not available in 2016 and 2017. To date, he says, there still hasn’t been funding for the contract to be complete.

But according to Mr Machado Energy “delivered the priority supplies earmarked by Mintrans (the Ministry of Transport) and the value of the services and rolling stock supplied was exactly equal to the amount disbursed.”

Unfortunately the Ministry has no record of any of this.

Where’s the Proof?

A well-informed source as the Ministry of Transport (speaking on condition of anonymity) told Maka Angola that US $75 million could not have been authorised by the Ministry as it didn’t have that money in its budget. Our source believes that the only possible source of the funds was the Angolan Central Bank, the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), whose governor at that time was José Pedro de Morais.

Our source says: “Someone must have given orders to the BNA to pay the US $75 million. There ought to be documentation to prove who gave the order and on what basis. Surely if AEnergy had undertaken any contractual work, there would also be records showing how that sum was spent – but we (at the Ministry) have not received any documentary evidence. We simply have no idea what AEnergy did with the money.”

“Furthermore, AEnergy has no justification in citing equipment donated to Angola by General Electric as part of its corporate social responsibility programme as though these were materials purchased by AEnergy with the advance payment.”

“We are talking about mobile medical clinics, training simulators and drones for checking rails; none of these were purchased by AEnergy. None. In fact the Ministry had to order AEnergy logos to be removed from these items because they were donated by GE and had no connection whatsoever with AEnergy.”

Our source has seen nothing to suggest that AEnergy has used any of the US $75 million to make any investment towards infrastructure or training: “Do the math. Then ask yourself: Were we robbed?”

Senior officials at the Ministry of Transport are said to be furious at the lack of any concrete information regarding the project, telling Maka Angola “mislaying just one million dollars would be important, let alone US $75 million, when like every other government institution we desperately need sufficient financial resources.”

In previous years the Ministry could count on a budget of US $1.5 billion for projects – this year its budget is barely US $100 million. Officials there say the government should conduct an exhaustive audit to recover all the missing millions – that would be a huge boost to investment in essential infrastructure.

Was the Contract Even Legit?

Maka Angola’s legal analyst, Rui Verde, emphasises that the process of entering into a contract with AEnergy was incomplete and that the huge sum handed over to the company was not legally justifiable.

“There is the possibility that this was a criminal act,” he says, “and the authorities should be looking into whether any fraud, peculation or money laundering took place.”

He notes that from a legal perspective it is perplexing that the contract fails to identify the equipment, or works, necessary to remodel and modernize the rail yards. It gives AEnergy carte blanche to draw up a Plan of Work and make its own decisions about what it is going to do. “The terminology ‘to remodel and modernize’ is ambiguous and vague and Clauses 3 to 8 in the contract seem to give the private company total discretion over how to spend US $500 million without having to account for it,” says Rui Verde.

“A properly-drawn contract would include a specific Plan of Work, spelling out what equipment is required at each stage. This had none of the specifics required to guarantee how public money was to be used – it was the equivalent of handing AEnergy US $500 million in a brown envelope and letting them decide what to do with it.”

As Rui Verde reminds us, “this brings to mind a similar scheme already before the courts in which the accused argued they needed the US $500 million upfront as surety to secure a US $30 billion loan. In fact, there was no loan on offer.”

Was this really another dodgy deal? In the words of social activist Luaty Beirão, was it just another case of the “embezzlement without end” that was part and parcel of the Dos Santos Administration. In the meantime Angola is still waiting to find out. Multi-billion-dollar deals between the government of Angola and the US corporate giant General Electric for showpiece rail and energy infrastructure projects are under investigation after reports of scandalous “irregularities” involving an intermediary company.

As reported by Maka Angola, the projects were all part of a Memorandum of Understanding, signed by GE and the Angolan government in 2013. Two years later, three separate contracts by which these proposals would be executed were drawn up by Aenergy (Aenergia, S.A.) acting as GE’s intermediary or “channel” partner, whose legal owner is Ricardo Leitão Machado, a Portuguese national.

This was how the former Angolan administration did business with the world. Under President José Eduardo dos Santos, foreign investors and businesses were required to enter into partnership with the Angolan private sector. All too often, these were companies with nominal owners shielding the involvement of politically exposed persons whose primary goal was to divert Angolan public funds into their private bank accounts.

The Railway Network Deal

Maka Angola reported concerns over the first of those deals: a contract signed with Angola’s Transport Ministry for the modernisation of the Angolan railway system. The project was supposed to be fully funded by a loan from a GE subsidiary, GE Capital, yet the Ministry of Finance coughed up (without prior approval) US $75 million US upfront to Aenergy, with little to show for it several years down the line.

Exercizing its right to reply, a lengthy statement from Aenergy (via PR firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies) says that all its actions in connection with that contract were legal and transparent and that the 20% of costs not covered under the deal with GE were due to logistics and import costs.

Angola’s Transport Ministry has a different opinion.

The Electricity Turbine Deal

This investigation looked in detail at another of those contracts with Aenergy from May 2015, in this instance with the Angolan Ministry of Water and Energy, by which GE would provide turbines for hydroelectric projects in Angola, also to be financed by GE Capital.

Allegedly, a version of the Aenergy contract suggests GE Capital’s U$1.1 billion would cover the cost of 8 GE turbines. In fact, GE supplied additional turbines but somehow the Ministry says it was persuaded by Aenergy’s legal owner, Ricardo Leitão Machado, that the surplus turbines had no connection with their deal.

As Angola’s increased needs for energy in the regions became clearer, by 2018 Energy Minister João Baptista Borges submitted a proposal to President João Lourenço that Angola revise its requirements to increase capacity for Lubango (in the central highland province of the same name), Dundo (in the Northeastern province of Lunda Norte) and Tômbwa (on the coast of Namibe province. He argued they could achieve this with just four extra turbines, by reducing the turbine capacity for the Soyo I power station (in Northwestern Zaire province), thus remaining within the budget agreed with GE Capital.

When this was put to Aenergy and GE at a meeting in December 2018, there was uproar. Aenergy was set to sell an extra four turbines on to the Angolans, for more than US $120 million, but the GE Angola representatives were adamant that the additional turbines were already included in the deal, as confirmed in writing by GE’s regional executive director, Elisee Sezan. In short, GE had funded and supplied 12 turbines to Angola; Aenergy had supplied only eight of them while asking the Ministry to pay again for the extra four.

Within days the Energy Minister sent a written report to President Lourenço (dated December 18, 2018) citing a breach of trust and no confidence in Aenergy. From that date onward, Angola began the process of extricating itself from its contractual obligations to Aenergy to deal directly with General Electric (as arguably should have been the case from the very start). On completion of the audit of their contractual relationship, Aenergy was found to owe Angola close to US $118 million.

President Lourenço was finally able to issue a decree authorizing the revocation of the contracts with Aenergy on the grounds of “violation of the principles of trust and good faith” in August 2019 and the following month a detailed dossier was sent to the office of the Attorney-General of the Republic, to launch a criminal investigation and request the seizure of the as yet undelivered turbines. On December 6, 2019, the Provincial Court of Luanda ordered the seizure of equipments in possession of Aenergy, worth US $114.2 million, all of which had been acquired with public funds.

It was only to be expected that Aenergy would react and launch an appeal against the Ministry’s injunction and for now the ponderous legal process is in course. One more mess, left by the Dos Santos kleptocracy, for which the Angolan people pay the price.

–

This article was originally published by our partner MAKA Angola.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Rafael Marques de Morais

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 character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, whose fabulous wealth was obtained through mysterious – and possibly illegal – means and whose machinations led to his downfall. Vincent Miclet 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. (However, the businessman did not respond the questionnaire sent to him for this article.)

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 per cent.

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 plump 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 King of Morocco. It’s where he played host to the notorious Alexandre Benalla, the former bodyguard of French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron, who was fired after he violently attacked the May 1st protesters.

How did the son of non-profit workers 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 suspect that his good fortune can be attributed to modern-day buccaneering.

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.

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 Angolan capital, Luanda, 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 in Angola, in partnership with then Minister of State and Presidential Security Chief, General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa”.

In 2011, President Dos Santos received intelligence that Tajideen was suspected of funding a terrorist organisation. 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.

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 $50 million-dollars-worth of foodstuffs per month, that is $600 million a year.

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 entire assets of the Arosfran Group in Angola (including 170 warehouses) for $150 million. Another of President Dos Santos’s close associates, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento “Dino”, obtained a personal loan of $150 million to this end from the Angolan Investment Bank (Banco Angolano de Investimento, BAI).

Several highly-placed sources told Maka Angola that Feijó and Kopelipa co-opted Vincent Miclet 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 detail from his account. He says he negotiated directly with Kassim Tajideen’s lawyer, Rui Ferreira, for the buy-out.

Yet by 2011 Ferreira had left his legal practice upon 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,” he stated. “As is well known, I was a lawyer in private practice for 23 years, between 1985 and 2008. 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 organisation 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. 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, said 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 emphasised that there was no remuneration or other benefit to him and 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,” he explained. “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 7 June 2011 by Kassim Tajideen and Vincent Miclet, the latter signing in his capacity as a “partner and manager of NDAD”. Out of the $150 million bank loan obtained by General Dino, two-thirds ($100 million) was paid directly to Kassim Tahjideen in September 2011 to compensate him for his expulsion from Angola. (He is banned from returning to Angola for a period of 20 years.)

As for the other part of the BAI loan ($50 million), well, 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,” said Carlos Feijó. (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 the 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”, said Feijó, “we had to be cognisant 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.”

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 Miclet was chosen to act as the head of the Arosfran Group. “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”, explained Feijó. “There was a legitimate contract of sale and purchase of the Arosfran Group’s real estate and assets,” he added.

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 Group: “To clarify, I mean Rui Ferreira’s private law firm, because I must emphasise 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 emphasise 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. Tajideen was subsequently found guilty of money laundering and funding Hezbollah and was ordered to pay a $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 the latter 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 organise the restructuring of the formal shareholder composition of NDAD, with legal assistance from the office of Carlos Feijó.

The remaining $50 million of the debt to Kassim Tajideen was paid off towards the end of 2013, largely thanks to a second loan of $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 the takeover of the Arosfran Group. The reason given 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,” said Feijó.

Adieu, Vincent

On February 25, 2015, measures were put in place to rescind the 80 per cent stock quota allocated in the name of Vincent Miclet and the 20 per cent quota in the name of Adélia El-Bichuti and re- allocate them instead to Paulo César Rocha Rasgado (80 per cent) and Samora Borges Sebastião Albino (20 per cent) both of whom were 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 $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 30 May 2015 Angodis wrote to General Kopelipa and the then Defence Minister, Cândido Van-Dúnem, to effect the return of $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 $20 million of food that was already paid for.

Everyone wanted a piece of the pie

Vincent Miclet committed his version of events to paper in a report for the 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 went 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 said that initially the Group had demanded $327.3 million but eventually settled for $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 said that 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). 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 $1.5 million in its first year of operation, former employees agreed that 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 $82.5 million, which he claimed was the value he had injected into the restructuring of the business and its import activities. After an audit by Deloitte, his erstwhile “partners” offered him a sweetener of $26 million, which Miclet rejected.

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 could chew.

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

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Rafael Marques de Morais

Luanda, Angola – Recently, I was flagged down by a traffic policeman seeking a ride back to the station after finishing his shift in one of Luanda’s main thoroughfares.Candidly, he explained his predicament: The pick-up vehicle had broken down.

Angolans being more used to seeing traffic cops stopping cars to check papers or negotiate a petty bribe, I expressed my surprise. The officer then explained why corruption is endemic. He said official salaries are so low that regular police officers cannot afford even the basics of life.His income is only the equivalent of $120 per month, even taking the informal exchange rate as a guide.

The officer’s admission came days after a media circus organised by the Commander-General of the National Police, Chief Commissar Ambrósio de Lemos. Without due process, the chief presided over a ceremony to expel two traffic police officers suspected of having taken a petty 1,500 Kwanza ($3) bribe. This public humiliation was intended to convey the message that the police are fighting corruption in their ranks. But it was evident that only the small fry are targeted.

What about the big fish, such as Chief Commissar Ambrósio de Lemos himself? Ironically the chief is embroiled in an ongoing criminal investigation in Spain that has already seen nine people thrown into jail. He himself is suspected of taking millions of dollars in kickbacks in a corrupt scheme whereby the Angolan National Police paid $169 million to import equipment from Spain that was valued at just $50 million. But in Angola,the commander remains firm in his position.

ABOVE THE LAW

Another example that demonstrates how the police commitment to fighting corruption in Angola is a joke: In 2013, I revealed that Chief Commissar Ambrósio de Lemos was profiting on several counts from a conflict of interest. He was acting as the representative of the Brazilian weapons manufacturer Taurus in Southern Africa while purchasing weapons from them, via a private company that he owned, for the National Police. Our exposé provided evidence of his self-serving dealings: Taurus equipment for the Angolan National Police was supplied by his company R& AB. At the same time, his company and Taurus had the nerve to apply for tens of millions of dollars from the Brazilian government’s credit line to Angola, to finance that sale of equipment, including 95,000 guns of various types. Did this spark an internal investigation? Was the Chief Commissar publicly humiliated and sacked? Of course not.

The Chief of Police has been a loyal servant of the regime who has done all he can to ensure opposition and protest are repressed. He has presided over a force that regularly deploys hundreds of police officers to beat up, torture and arrest a handful of young activists who persist in their attempts to protest publicly against the corrupt rule of President José Eduardo dos Santos. This is why the commander enjoys a licence to engage in corrupt schemes as he sees fit, with impunity

The four hallmarks of power in Angola are: Corruption (nepotism included); impunity; propaganda; and repression. The Chief of Police has been a loyal servant of the regime who has done all he can to ensure opposition and protest are repressed. He has presided over a force that regularly deploys hundreds of police officers to beat up, torture and arrest a handful of young activists who persist in their attempts to protest publicly against the corrupt rule of President José Eduardo dos Santos. This is why the commander enjoys a licence to engage in corrupt schemes as he sees fit, with impunity.

In 1996 a High Authority Against Corruption was created. Twenty years later no one has been nominated to serve on it!

WHAT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT?

Angola has a number of laws against corruption on the statute books. In 1996, the National Assembly passed a law (3/96) to create the High Authority Against Corruption, but in the intervening 20 years it has yet to nominate any members to serve on the High Authority, a delay typical of anti- corruption efforts in Angola, which exist in theory but are never put into practice.

Before parliament can nominate members to serve on the High Authority Against Corruption, the law requires the president to formally establish the institution. President dos Santos, who has been in power for 37 years, has never deigned to do so.

Although the High Authority has yet to come into existence, the law exists. And it specifies the procedures required of public servants to maintain a distinction between public and private affairs. It requires public office holders to publish their assets and income. It makes abuse of public office illegal, such as any act by government officials, members of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), the National Police, high-ranking civil servants or managers of public companies that would undermine the public interest or “the morality of administration.”[1]

The president’s act of omission in failing to create this body as required by the law passed by parliament, is unconstitutional and illegal. It reflects the lack of respect for the rule of law in the country. During its 40 years in power, the ruling MPLA party has shown an obsession with enacting laws. The aim is to assuage public opinion and maintain a veneer of legitimacy.

Seven years ago, in 2009, the president declared a ‘zero tolerance policy against corruption.’ One year later, Parliament enacted another anti-corruption law, the Law on Public Probity.Ironically, the word corruption appears nowhere in the text. This law also requires public office holders to submit a yearly declaration of assets and income – but only to the Office of the Attorney General, with the information not being for public disclosure. The evidence suggests this provision is neither enforced nor taken seriously.

See also: Angola’s Killing Fields: A report on extrajudicial executions in Luanda 2016-2017

The Attorney General, whose job it is to enforce this, does the opposite. That same year, 2009, the office of the Attorney General, Army General João Maria de Sousa, issued a statement confirming that he is the co-owner of Imexco, a private company that acted as a supplier both to his own public office and other government institutions.

The Attorney General, along with the President of the Military Supreme Court, General António Neto, while holding public office, were simultaneously managing partners of the same company. His office justified this clear conflict of interest as a “legal entitlement” the Attorney General enjoys in his capacity of “private citizen,” in blatant defiance of the law.

BUYING GOVERNMENT LAND FOR PEANUTS IN ANGOLA

More recently, I exposed another conflict of interest involving the Attorney General, this time in the role of areal estate entrepreneur who bought rural land from the government for peanuts, in order to build a seaside housing condominium. From the top down, Angola’s lawmakers and judges are as deeply involved in corruption as the lowliest police officer.

WHOM TO TURN TO?

The international scramble for Angola’s oil (along with the revenues therefrom) provided the Angolan president the leverage to gain all the international support he needed to quell internal dissent and to rule unchallenged. In a bold move, he enforced a requirement that any significant foreign investor in the country had to have a national partner. Invariably, this ‘national partner’ involved members of his own family, senior public officials and their families. As a result, foreign companies who have invested in Angola became part and parcel of the corruption schemes.

OPERATION CAR WASH – THE BRAZILIAN CONNECTION

The same can be said of a number of governments. A case in point is the biggest corruption scandal in Brazilian history, “Operation Car Wash” (in Portuguese: Operação Lava Jato), which revealed Angola’s involvement in money laundering schemes designed to funnel millions of dollars into the electoral campaigns of Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party – apparently to influence Brazilian investment in Angola (both are Lusophone, or Portuguese-speaking countries).

It is in this context that the Angolan parliament is set to pass, in coming days, the 2017 State Budget, which is a work of fiction that also serves to mask institutional corruption. For instance,the Ministry of Finance claims that it will collect three times more tax revenues from beer consumption (165 million Euros) than from diamond extraction and sales (49.2 million Euros). Angola is the fifth largest diamond producer in the world, and beer is one of the cheapest products consumed in the country. How is that possible? Binge drinking? No, the simple answer lies in the private control of the diamond extractive industry by the presidential family and powerful generals for their own enrichment.

The international scramble for Angola’s oil provided the Angolan president the leverage to gain all the international support he needed to quell internal dissent. In a bold move, he enforced a requirement that any significant foreign investor in the country had to have a national partner. Invariably, this ‘national partner’ involved members of his own family, senior public officials and their families

In 2010, President dos Santos’s first-born daughter, Isabel dos Santos, set up a company named Victoria Holdings in Malta. She incorporated it as a joint venture between herself and the Angolan state-owned diamond company Sodiam. The latter is the clearing-house that has the exclusive foreign sales rights on all Angolan diamonds. By 2012, this joint venture was doing so well it bought 75%of the stock of the Swiss jeweller De Grisogno for $100 million. There has been no public disclosure of how much of that was paid by the Angolan state. But experts believe De Grisogono has been a conduit to funnel diamonds out of Angola to fund Isabel dos Santos’s ventures. Announcement of this merger in the world of entertainment and business news was a coup aimed at seducing Hollywood, and serving to glamorise Angolan involvement while masking its corruption.

This year, De Grisogno made international headlines for buying the biggest diamond ever found in Angola, for more than $16 million, as well as the most expensive diamond in the world for $63 million. In a nutshell, Sodiam sold the Angolan diamond to its own venture with Isabel dos Santos. Was this a real sale? Does Sodiam accrue any benefit from such transactions? Although all state- owned companies are obliged to publicly disclose their annual reports, Sodiam and its parent company Endiama, which has the exclusive rights for licensing diamond concessions, have never done so.

Further adding insult to injury, in June, the president appointed his daughter Isabel head of the Angolan oil company Sonangol, giving her full control of a business that accounts for 95% of Angola’s exports.

Other family members also have their snouts in the trough. Three years ago, President Dos Santos appointed his son Filomeno José dos Santos head of Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which was kick-started with a $5 billion purse and an endowment of 100,000 barrels a day.

WHEN A FAMILY HAS A COUNTRY

As demonstrated by the examples above, within the Angolan regime the corrupt have their grip on everything, including law enforcement,so few can successfully stand up to them. Opposition parties are dependent on government subsidies for their survival. The international community colludes, or turns a blind eye. Inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring, hundreds of youth have been harassed, tortured and jailed for protesting against corrupt rule. Their drive has become instrumental in challenging the status quo and building a ‘revolutionary’ mindset against a regime that came into power and has clung on to it while trumpeting its own ‘revolutionary’ credentials

It is therefore commendable that a handful of journalists, against all odds, have continued to find creative ways to expose the corruption at the heart of an authoritarian regime. Inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring, hundreds of youth have been harassed, tortured and jailed for protesting against corrupt rule. Their drive has become instrumental in challenging the status quo and building a ‘revolutionary’ mindset against a regime that came into power and has clung on to it while trumpeting its own‘revolutionary’ credentials. These new ‘revolutionaries’ opposed to the old-guard ‘revolutionaries’ have made it an article of faith that President dos Santos must be forced to step down before the bonds of corruption that have kept the country hostage can be broken.

In the past few years, Angolans have taken to social media to vent their discontent against the scourge of corruption. The chorus of voices opposed to the excesses of the regime is growing and they demand accountability. https://www.dmcc.ae/content-page?404-Carat-Rough-Diamond-Acquired&articleid=a055F00000p7U 4qQAE http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanaas/2016/09/12/de-grisogono-brings-63-million-813-carat-rough -diamond-to-biennale-des-antiquaires/#7d9f098e8a25 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/one-of-world-s-largest-diamonds-now-in-dubai-631369.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2016/02/17/largest-diamond-found-angola-flawless-404-carat s/#e1879d4681de http://www.nemesisinternational.com/single-post/2016/08/23/Angola%E2%80%99s-SODIAM-Diamon d-Firm-Second-Largest-Exporter

[1] Assembleia Nacional (1996).

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