Search Results for: José Eduardo dos Santos

The Real Danger: Letter to President José Eduardo dos Santos

Mr President José Eduardo dos Santos: Since we are unlikely to meet, I have decided to attempt a conversation with you by this medium. I hope you respond to me. It is time to talk. Although I am sharply critical of how you govern, and of the suffering this causes the majority of the Angolan people, I admire you for staying in power so stoically; and, I understand very well your anxiety when faced with the prospect of losing power. Father António Vieira wrote: “Pulvis es, tu in pulverem reverteris”. Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. You are dust. That is the present. To dust you shall return. That is the future. That is the future that you are trying to avoid at any cost, and which results in the anxiety that I mentioned. For a while during my childhood, you cultivated a fear of yourself. In […]

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President José Eduardo dos Santos’ Regime is Afraid of Books

A Maka Angola reader has raised a pertinent question concerning the detention on 21 June of 13 activists who were busy discussing methods of peaceful protest against what they consider to be a dictatorship. Two more activists were detained in the following days, and all fifteen were accused of plotting a coup d’etat. Most of these activists are known for their ill-fated attempts to organize anti-government demonstrations, which have been brutally suppressed. But how is it possible, the reader asks, that people who cannot manage even the most basic protest without being violently clamped down and detained, could have the means to organize a coup d’etat? Tired, perhaps, of being the punching bag for the authorities and of being accused by a part of civil society of being disorganized, the young people decided to form a study group. They armed themselves with books on peaceful forms of protest in order […]

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Isabel dos Santos: The Fall of Africa’s Richest Woman

Just think for a minute. In a two-year span, a father gave his daughter, among several contracts, four that were worth over US $22 billion. The father is then President José Eduardo dos Santos, and the daughter is Isabel, Africa’s richest woman. These were the golden days of the presidential family’s capture of Angola. Period. In the past month, with a stroke of a pen, General João Lourenço has annulled the four egregious contracts. The former “princess” is crying foul, and is threatening to sue the Angolan state however, the state is calling out her bluff. Her fortune is about to tumble like a house of cards, just as her father’s power fell flat once he left office after 38 years. Through her father’s presidential decrees, Isabel built her fortune. Now, ironically, the man her father personally chose to replace him is first and foremost taking away the family’s fortunes […]

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Ex-President dos Santos and His Son’s Billion-Dollar Scam

Before agreeing to step aside after 38 years in power, Angola’s former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, made sure he obtained guarantees of permanent immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed during his time in office. For Angola’s ruling party MPLA and lawmakers, it was a pragmatic necessity: how else could Dos Santos be persuaded to step aside? The man had an international reputation as one of Africa’s most zealous kleptocrats, using his position to enrich himself and his extended family. Six months on, however, a complex international investigation into an attempted US $1.5 billion fraud involving his son José Filomeno dos Santos “Zenú” has put Angolans openly discussing whether the Dos Santos family en masse should have those immunity guarantees removed. His son is firmly in the sights of criminal investigators who have documentary evidence that it was his father who oversaw the attempted scam. The Weakest Link As […]

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Valter Filipe and José Filomeno dos Santos indicted

José Filomeno dos Santos (son of former presidente José Eduardo dos Santos, known as Zenú), and the former governor of the National Bank of Angola, Valter Filipe, were indicted two weeks ago by the Attorney General’s Office for their involvement in the 500-million-dollar fraud. This refers to the transfer last September of 500 million dollars from the National Bank of Angola to an account with Crédit Suisse in London as a guarantee for a supposed funding of 30 billion dollars. In fact, as already investigated by Maka Angola early in January the operation would turn out to be a fraud against the Angolan State that was carried out by José Filomeno dos Santos. To carry it out, he used his dummy company, Mais Financial Services. London’s financial authorities suspected the fraud and blocked the funds in London. The referred transfer led to the resignation, on October 27, of the then […]

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Refugees: A Sore Point for Dos Santos and Kabila

More than 30,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are housed in two temporary reception camps, Kakanda and Mussunga, in Lunda-Norte province. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that about 500 refugees are arriving in these camps each day. Congolese citizens are continuing to cross the border to escape the current conflict in the Kasai region, which erupted in April last year. Last April, in addition to the refugees, around 180 armed men from the Congolese armed forces and police also escaped from the clashes between government forces and the Kamwina Nsapu militia, according to the data this website received from the local authorities. The same sources say that more than 100 members of the Congolese forces managed to escape the control of the defence and security forces, and ‘disappeared’ in the Angolan town of Dundo, while the rest were repatriated. In the same month, […]

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Isabel dos Santos and the Right of Reply

Isabel dos Santos, self-described ‘African billionaire businesswoman’ and head of the Angolan national oil company, Sonangol, (appointed by her father, the President of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos) was clearly rattled by the report published here on Maka Angola last week, entitled ‘Sonangol’s Slush Fund Salaries’ and has sent an official response. Maka Angola is delighted to afford the Sonangol President the right of reply. Sonangol’s ‘Official Reaction’ states (without offering proof) that the report was incorrect. And yet, instead of supplying alternative data, the response serves to confirm the inside information supplied to Maka Angola. (1) Sonangol’s whistleblowers reported elevated salaries for the board. And outrageous expenses and consultancy fees for a cabal of Portuguese nationals, effected overseas to avoid paying Angolan tax. The President’s daughter confirms that fees for the board of directors were raised to keep pace with inflation – in effect at the very least a […]

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Isabel dos Santos’ Missing Declaration of Assets

On June 2, 2016 President José Eduardo dos Santos appointed his daughter Isabel dos Santos to the two most powerful roles in the state oil company, Sonangol: by decree he named her Chairman of the Board of Directors and Non-Executive Administrator. Notwithstanding the case pending before the Supreme Court to obtain an injunction to stay her appointment, Isabel – like any other administrator – is required by law to submit a declaration of income and assets to the Attorney General within 30 days of taking office. And yet a source within the Attorney General’s office tells us that five months later neither Isabel dos Santos nor any other member of the board of directors has submitted these legal requirements. Maka Angola contacted the office of the Attorney General to confirm this matter but he declined to comment. To be clear: the law which obliges Isabel dos Santos to submit a […]

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The Dos Santos Brand Turns Toxic

In Angola it is a crime to speak ill of the President. The man, who for the past 37 years has led the ruling MPLA party (the Peoples’ Movement for the Liberation of Angola) is accustomed to hearing only praise from within his party’s ranks. Yet on the eve of what was expected to be a slickly-organized party congress, aiming to re-establish José Eduardo dos Santos as the party’s sole candidate for President in next year’s elections, there has been an unprecedented public condemnation from a senior party cadre. “The popular appeal of the MPLA – the party of the President and head of state [José Eduardo dos Santos] – is at an all-time low thanks to his ‘shenanigans’. He gives the party a bad name – and when he falls, he will drag the innocent members of the MPLA down with him.” This stunning denunciation from Ambassador Ambrósio Lukoki, […]

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Isabel dos Santos: Africa’s Richest Woman and the Lie of Her Assets

When Isabel dos Santos sits down to count her billions, as Africa’s richest woman, much of that fortune is in stocks and shares which she counts as her own. Forbes estimates her wealth at US $3.3 billion. The reality, however, is that a large proportion (almost two thirds of her fortune) estimated at 1.6 billion Euros (US $1.8 billion) according to the Diário Economico’s calculations, corresponds to stocks in the Portuguese oil and gas company, Galp, which legally belong to the Angolan National Oil Company, Sonangol. President José Eduardo dos Santos’s daughter told the Wall Street Journal last February: “I’m not financed by any state money or any public funds.” She insisted “I don’t do that.” Ever since the announcement that she had become a billionaire, Isabel has done her utmost to justify her fortune as “clean”, the result of entrepreneurial expertise which began with her selling eggs at the […]

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