Sonangol Group

Foundation On the eve of Portuguese Angola's independence from Portugal following the Carnation Revolution and the election of a democratic government in Portugal in 1976, the company ANGOL (ANGOL Sociedade de Lubrificantes e Combustíveis SARL), founded in 1953 as a subsidiary of Portuguese company SACOR) was nationalized and split in two, forming Sonangol U.E.E. and Direcção Nacional de Petróleos. Directive 52/76 instituted Sonangol as a state-owned company with a mandate to manage the country's substantial petroleum industry. Using the extant remains of Texaco, Total, Shell and Mobil's oil works, Sonangol obtained the assistance of Algerian Sonatrach and of Italian Eni. In 1983, Sonangol opened its first international subsidiary, Sonangol Limited, in London. In December 2013, Sonangol acquired the exploration rights to five onshore oil blocks in Angola, which could be tendered for development at a later date. Graft under the dos Santos family Didier Keller bribery case According to the judgement of a Swiss court in 2020, Didier Kelley paid key Sonangol officials a total of US$ 6.8 million in bribes between 2005 and 2008 while CEO of SBM Offshore. Kelley was fined over US$ half a million. At the time the bribery took place, the chairman of the board of directors of Sonangol was Manuel Vicente, who was also Vice President of Angola under President José Eduardo dos Santos. Though Vicente was not accused of accepting these bribes directly, in the opinion of the Swiss authorities, he would have been aware of them. Dream's Leisure Starting in 2006, Sonangol financed the construction of the Centro de Convenções de Talatona (CCTA), a convention center which was opened in December 2009 by President dos Santos. The CCTA included the five-star A ten-year, a US$ 12 million contract for management of the HCTA was then awarded to Dream's Leisure, a company created thirteen days prior to the issuing of the contract, which was owned by Manuel Vicente, then chairman of the board of directors of Sonangol; Francisco Maria de Lemos, financial director of Sonangol; and Orlando Veloso, director of the engineering department. The terms of this contract stipulated that Sonangol would compensate Dream's Leisure for any net losses incurred through management of the hotel. Furthermore, the contract forbade Sonangol to transfer any third-party rights without approval from Dream's Leisure. In the opinion of Rui Verde, a lawyer and legal expert of anti-corruption watchdog Maka Angola, "the contract clearly encourages Dream's Leisure to inflate costs and declare losses, in order to plunder the State as much as possible." This move was later described in 2020 as "tainted by illegality" by a Dutch international arbitration tribunal in Amsterdam, "to reap an extraordinary financial gain to the detriment of Sonangol and, consequently, of the State of Angola," which froze Exem's assets, ruling in favor of a legal complaint by Sonangol that Exem owes them the shares back because of the corrupt way in which they were acquired. Unaccounted-for billions In December 2011, Human Rights Watch said that the government of Angola should explain the whereabouts of US$32 billion missing from government funds linked to Sonangol. A December 2011 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that the government funds were spent or transferred from 2007 through 2010 without being properly documented in the budget. The IMF was assured that most of $32 billion was being used for "legitimate government reasons" and considered to be "found". Isabel dos Santos In June 2016, President dos Santos removed the entire board of Sonangol, and installed his daughter Isabel as chairwoman of the company, to "ensure transparency and apply global corporate-governance standards". This led to many accusations of corruption and nepotism. One year later, Maka Angola reported that Isabel dos Santos demanded, with threat, that the Ministry of Finance inject three billion US$ into the company, claiming it was necessary to rescue Sonangol from immediate bankruptcy, though this was not granted. Isabel and her inner circle were paid salaries, described in one indictment as "exorbidant renumerations," that cost Sonangol over US$ 13 million in 14 months between 2016 and 2017, with her own monthly salary set at more than US$ 50,000. In November 15, 2017, the new President of Angola, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, dismissed both Isabel and the entire board of directors under her and named Carlos Saturnino Guerra Sousa e Oliveira as the Sonangol chairman. An internal audit later revealed that after she had been dismissed, Isabel had transferred US $38 million of the company's funds to the Dubai based company Ironsea (later renamed Matter), which was only created by herself and her friend, Mário Leite da Silva, earlier that year. In total, Ironsea/Matter charged Sonangol more than US$ 130 million. Isabel fled to Dubai to avoid arrest in Angola, and in 2022 Interpol issued a red notice towards her. She is accused of crimes including abuse of power, abuse of trust, embezzlement, forgery of documents, influence peddling, money laundering, and tax fraud. Privatization and streamlining In February 2019, the Angolan government began its Propriv privatization program, and created the National Oil, Gas and Biofuel Agency (ANPG) to take over regulation and promotion of the Angolan petroleum industry from Sonangol. ANPG was given the power to supervise Sonangol, and became the new national concessionaire. In this regard, ANPG now controls who wins licenses to explore for petroleum, and awards contracts for production. In May 2019, Carlos e Oliveira was sacked and replaced by Sebastião Gaspar Martins as head of the company. In July 2019, President Lourenço canceled the Dream's Leisure contract, returning control of the Talatona hotel to the state. ==Organization==