Isaias Samakuva’s Fortune and the Call for Transparency

By guest

http://makaangola.org

By Rob Pires:

It all began with a photograph, published on facebook, of a house in a drab London suburb. A well-known pro-government social media activist, who goes by the name of ManDavid, claimed that it belonged to the UNITA leader, Isaias Samakuva. The UNITA leader, went the argument, was not poor. Several locations picked up on 192.com, a website that gives London addresses, were connected to people with the Samakuva surname. The activist claimed that the UNITA leader had bought all these London properties with party funds.

The UNITA leader’s response was swift. He claimed that he was not “farinha do mesmo saco” (“flower from the same bag”) as his opponents in the ruling party. There have been well-documented allegations of corruption against several members of the ruling party.

Samakuva claimed that he was going to declare all his possessions before June 19. True to his word, the UNITA leader published a list his assets, which add up to slightly under US $400 thousand. Many ordinary people lauded his gesture and wondered who would follow this initiative.

But not all were impressed by Samakuva’s openness. Some noted that assets could easily be hidden under close relative names. They called on all of Samakuva’s close relatives to reveal their worldly possessions. They do, indeed, have a point. In the eighties and early nineties, Samakuva was UNITA’s principal London-based treasurer. He would certainly not have many difficulties in stashing aways millions. In any case, many thought this was a positive move towards creating a culture of transparency.

In the higher rungs of the Angolan political and financial elite, opaque practices are almost seen as a virtue. For many high-ranking Angolans, secrecy seems to be at the heart of most business practices. In some Angolan establishments – restaurants, hotels, companies – asking who the owners are is a highly delicate question. A hotel is likely to be empty for most of the month. Suddenly, it will burst into activities and make much money because its distant owners will have arranged a conference for which they will charge exorbitantly high charges. A restaurant will see customers directed to it, and its inflated bills promptly paid. Some key figure in a government department connected to the restaurant will have directed the clients.

This lack of openness stifles all competition. Officially, the previously Marxist-Leninist state operates now in a free market economy, and, at least in theory, there is a private sector that is supposed to thrive on competition. In this brave new world, entrepreneurs are supposed to identify opportunities or needs, and devise ways of satisfying those needs. The private sector is, therefore, supposed to be filled with efficient, resourceful and determined individuals who would energize the national economy.

But in reality, there is hardly any division between the private sector and the government. Several individuals use their government positions to favour their private sector interests. Government officials will, for instance, offer contracts worth thousands of dollars to companies they control. In the process they make colossal tunes.

The Angolan government insists on there being an Angolan share on any major investment ventures. The idea is that there must be some local empowerment. The danger is that those benefiting from the local empowerment are often those who have to decide on the ventures. This conflict of interests results in further secrecy and lack of transparency. In the end, the government ends up being nothing more than a structure to promote and sustain businesses of specific groups and individuals.

The kind of transparency shown by Isaías Samakuva would undermine this corrupt culture.

In a culture, for instance, where political leaders are supposed to regularly declare their assets, eyebrows would certainly be raised if a minister in charge of the environment was found to be a shareholder of a mining company that was solely interested in profits. In this situation, the minister would be mainly interested in his rewards and not in the welfare of the rest of the society. Politicians are there to serve the interests of the society and not take advantage of their positions to enrich themselves.

Isaias Samakuva move will certainly bring attention, once again, to the question of how Angolan politicians are making fortunes. President Dos Santos has, on several occasions, admitted that corruption had, indeed, become a major menace in the country. In November 2009, he unveiled a zero-tolerance policy against corruption. So far, despite overwhelming evidence against people close to him, no major single person has been brought before the courts for corruption.

Furthermore, since June 2010, public officials are legally required to submit their declaration of assets to the Office of the Attorney-General.Failure to do so or providing false statements can result in sanctions, including dismissal and criminal charges. Although this measure looks good on paper, the fact of the matter is that such declarations are treated as state secrets, and the public has no idea on whether the public officials, including the president, have, in fact, filed their papers or not.

Samakuva has shown that leaders should lead by example. It is not just a matter of making fine speeches whose content is forgotten as soon as they are put aside. Abel Chivukuvuku, the leader of CASA, a newly founded electoral coalition, had declared his assets in the past. These included a building worth millions of dollars. How he got the money to afford such valuable real estate remains a big question. Suffice it to say that Chivukuvuku’s name was once featured among prominent figures that had not repaid their loans to a bank that had gone bankrupt. There are certainly few saints in the Angolan political elite. However, Samakuva’s gesture has suddenly prompted Angolans to start asking about who will follow next.

Angola.The Next VP and the Legalization of Corruption

Manuel Vicente’s nomination as president José Eduardo dos Santos’ running mate in the upcoming August 31 election comes as no surprise.

By Rafael Marques de Morais

http://makaangola.org

The former Sonangol Chairman had long been expected to take the number two spot on the candidates’ list of the incumbent Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and thus walk into the job of Vice President when, as it is almost certain, the party wins the ballot.

What is baffling though about Mr. Vicente – who in January was plucked from Sonangol and appointed Minister of State for Economic Co-ordination – is the way in which he appears to be interpreting the laws of the country, most especially those regarding corruption.

On August 8, 2010, this author published a report titled “Presidency: The Epicentre of Corruption in Angola” in which it claimed Mr. Vicente and two other senior officials at the presidency were allegedly involved with illegal private business deals worth over US$1 billion across various sectors including oil, banking, telecoms, biofuels, and media.

The report highlighted how Mr. Vicente, then head of Sonangol, was also co-owner of Nazaki Oil and Gas, a company that set up a consortium with the U.S. oil company Cobalt. In 2010, Sonangol awarded two pre-salt oil blocs, 9 and 21, to the consortium (Cobalt 40 percent, Nazaki 30 percent, Alper Oil 10 percent and Sonangol Pesquisa & Produção, the remaining 20 percent) without public tender as required by law.

Furthermore, as head of Sonangol, Manuel Vicente selected the local equity partners, Nazaki and Alper, in clear violation of the Angolan anti-corruption laws. He selected his own company to be the main local partner of Cobalt, with which it still shares the same business address in Luanda.

Following the publication of this report and its dissemination in local media, MPLA spokesman, Rui Falcão Pinto de Andrade, publicly called on the “relevant authorities” to issue a public statement and for the judiciary to “act accordingly.”

The report led the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Justice Department to launch, last November, a formal investigation into Cobalt, on the suspicion of a violation of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA).

Angola’s Law on Public Probity, which is the country’s main legal framework against corruption, allows ordinary citizens who have claim to have evidence of corrupt practices by public officials to personally lodge criminal complaints against the suspects. Thus, on January 06, 2012, this author filed a criminal complaint against the partners of Nazaki Oil and Gas S.A, namely Manuel Vicente, at that time Chairman of Sonangol, General Hélder Manuel Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa”, Minister of State and Head of the Military Bureau of the President of the Republic; and General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, top military advisor to General Kopelipa in the presidency.

At that time the three each held equal shares (33.3 percent) of the joint stock of a company called Grupo Aquattro Internacional S.A., which in turn, held 99.96 percent of the shares of Nazaki Oil & Gas.

The criminal complaint alleged that the three men used and abused their positions of power and their ability to influence President Dos Santos, who promulgates the deals, in order “to gain illegal control over state assets in the privatisation of public companies” and for the “creation of consortiums with public and international companies.” In 2009, Dos Santos signed off the privatization of the then state-owned mobile operator, Movicel, to a consortium of local companies led by Portmill Investmentos e Comunicações. This phony company, which benefitted from 40 percent of the shares, had been set up as a subsidiary of Grupo Aquattro. Just a month before the final act of privatization, the trio had formally transferred their shares to a group of senior officers of the president’s detail.

To date, the response of the Attorney-General’s office to this criminal complaint has been one of eerie silence, even though a separate complaint lodged by the author, also making allegations against senior military and government figures has elicited a response.

This second complaint , dated November 14, 2011, alleges that nine military Generals – among them Minister of State General Hélder Manuel Vieira Dias Júnior “Kopelipa” were involved in gross human rights abuses and corruption in the diamond areas of the Lundas’ region.

On receiving this complaint, the Attorney General’s office promptly summoned the author to provide additional testimony, along with several witnesses. An impact has already been felt, the private security company Teleservice, which belongs to the Generals and is at the centre of the allegations, having withdrawn its operations from the diamond areas.

Many wonder why so little has happened regarding Mr Vicente’s case. Perhaps the answer lies in an old law dating back to Angola’s Marxist-Leninist period (and which is at odds with the 2010 constitution),that says the Attorney General, “receives direct instructions” from the president of the Republic. The law also establishes that the president’s instructions to the Attorney General are for “compulsory compliance.”

If it is the president of Angola who ultimately decides who to prosecute and who should be shielded from the law, then it appears President Dos Santos has decided that the man he has appointed as his putative successor will stand above the law.

Nevertheless, while he has been careful when making personally statements that might be interpreted as dismissing the rule of the law, his inner circle has a different approach.

In April this year, Manuel Vicente and General Kopelipa openly admitted, to the Financial Times, that they were shareholders of Grupo Aquattro and, thus, owners of Nazaki.

This acknowledgement follows an October 10 2010 rebuttal to the report published on Maka Angola, where Nazaki’s frontman formally denied any links to Mr Vicente and Generals Kopelipa and Nascimento. Zandre Eudénio de Campos Finda stated that none of the persons mentioned “have any connection with the company, are not shareholders (…)”

In a written statement to Cobalt, for legal purposes, Mr. Finda claimed that the “self-appointed ‘Angolan journalist and human rights activist´” Rafael Marques de Morais made allegations that were “abusive of the right to freedom of expression, crudely disrespecting the most elemental ethical and moral principles that govern journalistic activities, to which he allows himself to add sensationalist affirmations and misleading arguments.”

In their written statement to the Financial Times, Mr Vicente and General Kopelipa claimed to have dissolved Grupo Aquattro. This act merely involves the publication in the state daily gazette of the dissolution act, and it does not preclude acts of corruption they engaged in with previously with the company.

Mr Vicente and General Kopelipa’s reasoning for publicly acknowledging their shareholdings to the Financial Times is being widely interpreted as little more than a public relations exercise for international audiences. Internally, Mr Vicente knows he can enjoy the impunity afforded to him by President Dos Santos thanks to his absolute control of Attorney General’s office. President Dos Santos shields his running mate from prosecution, and allows him to proceed with his corrupt deeds and, by extension, those of the president as well.

The Financial Times failed to acknowledge that it had sourced its original information from Maka Angola, nor did it make any efforts it appears to question the ownership structure of Alper Oil, the other Angolan company with an equity share in Blocks 9 and 21.

Hopefully Mr. Vicente will grant a second “rare interview” with an international media outlet in order to be able to make this final disclosure.

The now infamous misplacement of US$32 billion of state funds that took place, between 2007 and 2010 happened on Mr. Vicente’s watch. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) most of the money went to “quasi-fiscal operations being conducted by Sonangol, on behalf of the government that was not being recorded as budgetary spending.” But while the Fund was keen to point out most of the money had been “accounted for,” no evidence was provided to the Angolan public to show how. That in of itself could be argued as a cause for legal action against the president and Manuel Vicente. Furthermore, there is no law in the country that enables Sonangol to engage in quasi-fiscal operations. Even to adjust fuel prices, each time, Sonangol must seek permission from the executive, which grants it in the form of a decree published in the National Daily Gazette. Furthermore, the 2002 Law on State-Owned Companies (Empresas Públicas) clearly establishes that all cash flows between such companies and the state shall be recorded in the state budget. Those who fail to comply are subject both to civil and criminal penalties. The IMF’s argument that the country has accounting capability issues wears a little thin. If anything, Sonangol has proven just how good Angolans can be at accounting and financial management.

Mr. Vicente appears to be oblivious to Angolan law to have been able to say so confidently to the Financial Times that there was no corruption in the Cobalt deals. He told the journalist: “It is important that the world understands. The idea is to empower the locals and we’ll keep doing that surely, within the [Angolan] law.”

To which laws could Mr. Vicente have been referring? Which Angolan laws allow a government official, while on duty, to engage in private business ventures with the state he serves? There are no such legal provisions. On the contrary, such acts constitute crime under the Angolan Law on Public Probity.

Thus the Financial Times in its publication of this story has ignored the country’s relevant legislation and taken Mr. Vicente’s remarks at face value, as do so many academics and the IMF who offer their expertise on such matters.

Under the Presidency of Dos Santos, it could be argued that corruption is the governing institution, but under Mr. Vicente this author believes it will become the law.

President Dos Santos has maintained a veneer of legality in his official discourses against corruption, in order to legitimize himself and his regime. But, his choice for vice-president appears to unabashedly champion corruption as a legal deed, and saddest of all, Mr. Vicente’s message finds no critical filters abroad.

Four years on the way to the eternity

It was the end of Second World War and the beginning of other, because the human beings do of the war yours to live. Of the unforgettable subsequent hunger and your efforts for to mitigate. Everything in the Universe has the deep love, unforgettable of our mothers. What interest does have the life without our mother's presence? It is me difficult to explain like them get with their instincts find food for us not to let to die of hunger. It is also like them support days without eating because her body is prepared for that. That suffering that gives hope in the love in the display our mother, the victory of the love. 

The time passes, but our mother's love stays. Mother's love is only, it is the mystery that invades the Nature, and it is to stick to sweetly when still newly born and to show us the secret of the initiation of the sweetness of the words. Mother is a goddess that unmasks us the rites of the love. Of mother's glance the crowds of feelings that appease our innocent innovations flow. And of the constant dangers that peep us, the mother becomes eagle and she spreads their majestic wings and she involves our body. Everything in our mothers is composed of love, only that we didn't value him because early we see forced to swim in the human jungle, and here many rocks are plentiful, we ended for we forget the caresses in such little time in that we were in the progenitor's of the love protecting arms.  

Mother's love is not equaled, being so pure and touching, he is the conqueror of the love. Mother is the essence, the hope of the love. Same it blinds, deaf, it changes; she is imposed with tenacity demonstrating their children that without love the death won't delay. Mother's love is our oracle.  

 

He/ would take a risk saying, coloring the ground of the life of the people's world that they try to leave of the political cry of the days, that the politicians invented. For that reason, the jacarandas invigorate the coloration of the new days that they approach. It is that us humans are about always to revolutionize. 

And in the creeks the water runs slowly, it transports, he offers life. Always pursued by insects and birds that screen while it is day, then, in darkening of the night other lives they appear, they resume. And the varied vegetation lets to agitate for the wind that the cycle of the life returns. Everything runs of harmony, to the subjugation of the Nature, until that somebody biped suddenly it arrives, and everything loses temper, adulterous. 

Image: ebooke.ewebsite.com

 

 

 

 

A Routine of Kidnappings

Five unidentified individuals abducted youth protest organizer Gaspar Luamba on June 14, in Luanda. For six hours and a half, they interrogated and harassed him.

By Rafael Marques de Morais

http://makaangola.org
At around 10 A.M., as the activist finished a class on political sociology, at the Angolan Institute for International Politics (ISA), two classmates informed him that two individuals would like to speak to him downstairs. According to his narrative, when he went down, from the first floor, he saw no such individuals in the yard, and walked out of the premises. Mr. Luamba, aged 25, is a first-year student of international relations and political sciences at ISA.
In the street, some hundred meters from the institute, two men approached him, and politely asked him to get into a car without any resistance to avoid alerting the passersby. As he hesitated, a pickup truck Mitsubishi L200 sped to cut his retreat, two men pulled out, one pointed a handgun at him and the other slapped him twice in the face. The men hauled him off to the back seat of a second car, a four wheel drive KIA, where a fifth man, the head of the mission was.
“They drove at a high speed, and straight to the building yard of Odebrecht, by the Benfica expressway,” said Luamba. Odebrecht is a Brazilian multinational company, involved in construction, oil, diamond and other ventures in Angola, and it is known as one of the companies with close ties to the presidential palace.
Gaspar Luamba explained to Maka Angola that his abductors rushed him to an office, where one of them laid some instruments on a table “for torture,” including pliers and an angle grinder. According to his testimony, the head of the mission asked him: “Now that you are here, where it is the law to defend you?” Meanwhile, one of the kidnappers asked permission to “pluck one of my finger nails with the pliers, for me to speak out and fast,” said Mr. Luamba.
His captors wanted to know who are the sources of funding and encouragements of the anti-government youth movement that has been holding small protests against the nearly 33-year rule of president Dos Santos since March 2011. Gaspar Luamba also said that the men were fully aware of the details of his recent movements (including a trip to his hometown of Malanje), whom he met and where he went. They also knew details about the lives of other leading protesters such as Carbono Casimiro, and his upcoming trip abroad; Mbanza Hamza, and his financial woes; and rapper Luaty Beirão. The latter was briefly detained on June 12, at the Lisbon International Airport, upon his arrival, as the local police found cocaine in his checked in luggage.
According to Mr. Luamba, his abductors wanted to know if the main opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and its most recent splinter CASA-CE, had channeled funds to support the protests. On May 19, UNITA held peaceful demonstrations throughout the country, demanding a transparent electoral process, which drew tens of thousands of people. These were the largest crowds seen since 1992, in support of a cause that was not that of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has been in power for nearly 37 years.
The victim explained that the kidnappers asked him to put a price on his conversion, and that of his fellow protesters, to the regime’s side. Upon asking about whom he would be dealing with, he received a hard slap on the face from the chief interrogator.
“The chief told me that if we [youth protest leaders] continue to insist in protesting: ‘This people whom you say you are defending, will have no idea about your whereabouts or your fate, and you will get no help’.”
The kidnappers also took the opportunity, according to Mr. Luamba’s narrative, to convey a message that the author, who has been writing on the protests and on corruption, is a target on hold. “The chief told me that there is no law preventing them to act as they please against you. He said: ‘If we have not thrown that Rafael Marques in jail yet or if we still keep him alive it is only for a strategic reason,’” said Mr.Luamba.
On the same day of the kidnapping, unidentified individuals displayed more open surveillance in front of the author’s residence, also on a Mitusbishi L200 pickup truck parked in front of the house at dawn, which included following ostensibly the family’s movements to and from the house, with note takings and acts of provocation. The following day, the same individuals proceeded with the same routine.
The youth leader said that the other men in the room kept taunting him with requests, to the head of the mission, to allow them to pluck one of his eyes, among other graphic descriptions of the pain they could inflict on his body.
Initial reports released on the kidnapping mistakenly stated that the incident happened at Jean Piaget University, in Viana. Mr. Luamba is also concurrently at this university as third year sociology student.
Gaspar Luamba is the youth organizer who has had most run-ins with the authorities and pro-government militias. He was first briefly arrested by the police on May 25, along with Carbono Casimiro, Mbanza Hamza, Pandita Nehru and seven other youths, as well as the widow of a ruling party icon Pascoal Luvualu, the elder Elsa Luvualu, who had sided with the youth.
Three months later, on August 20, Gaspar Luamba, Casimiro Carbono, Pandita Nehru and six other protest organizers decided to hold a press conference at a public square, to denounce the violence against peaceful demonstrators, and swiftly ended up in jail, and their equipment confiscated. The police later released the individuals without any explanation. In an act of stubbornness, the youngsters decided to camp in front of the police station where they had been held, in protest for their arbitrary arrest, and held a vigil to demand the return of their video equipment and photo cameras. After negotiations with a senior police officer, who promised to return their equipment, the youngsters went home.
It only took two weeks of respite for Mr. Luamba. At midday of September 3, their colleague Pandita Nehru was kidnapped around Independence Square, in Luanda, where they had scheduled an anti-dos Santos demonstration. Mr. Luamba and the others decided they would march in protest towards the presidencial palace. They conveyed their intentions to the police commanding officers who were at the square. The latter did not take action on the kidnapping that had just happened in the open. Two hours later, with no news on their comrade, the youth set on foot toward the palace. The police and plainclothes officers swiftly repressed the demonstrators with clubs and iron rods. The attacks injured several protesters, including Mr. Luamba, who was seriously hit on the head with an iron rod, fainted, and later needed 12 stitches to suture the wound. Adolfo Campos André had injuries in the face, lost a tooth, and needed five stitches on the lips. The police fractured the right arm of António Roque dos Santos, while it hit José Mwanza with an iron rod on the head that required six stitches. Carbono Casimiro, Alexandre Dias dos Santos and Afonso Mayenda “Mbanza Hamza” served as punching bags for the police officers and the thugs assisting them.
The police had to rush Gaspar Luamba and Adolfo Campos to two different hospitals, including the Military Hospital, as they were in a state of unconsciousness, while 40 other youth were hauled off to different police stations in detention. The following day, after being released from hospital, the police subjected him, and two other protesters, José Mwanza and António Cangombe, to torture in the cells of the Bairro Operário Police Station.
Gaspar Luamba was then convicted, among 16 others, of disorderly conduct, and spent a total of 43 days in jail. On the third day after his release the police picked him in the street, while walking to a lunch, and booked him again. Later in the day, a commander explained to him that the main cause for his arrest was his protest t-shirt with the slogan “32 is too much”, a reference to the years in power of president Dos Santos. Mr Luamba was set free.
Last month, on May 22, a group of 15 pro-government militias stormed the house of rapper Casimiro Carbono, in Luanda, armed with pistols, machetes and iron rods. Gaspar Luamba was among the 10 protest organizers present at Carbono’s house that evening. Beatings ensued, and Gaspar Luamba’s head was once again struck with an iron bar, which required eight stitches, and had an arm fractured.
As elections are set for August 31, pressure on anti-dos Santos critics has increased. He is running and is expected to finally be elected president, after 33 years without ever being elected by the people.
To overcome people’s resistance to his rule, president dos Santos masterminded the abolition of direct presidential elections in the Constitution. Angola has now an atypical system is which the president is neither directly elected by the people nor by parliament. The first name, on the closed list system for the legislative elections, of the winning party automatically becomes president of the republic.
The president, his wife, first lady Ana Paula dos Santos, and his daughter Welwitchia dos Santos “Tchizé”, are all running for parliament.