The 750 Million Dollar Man -- Michael Weiss, Foreign Policy
How a Swiss commodities giant used shell companies to make an Angolan general three-quarters of a billion dollars richer.
Revolutionary communist regimes have a strange habit of transforming themselves into corrupt crony capitalist ones and Angola -- with its massive oil reserves and budding crop of billionaires -- has proved no exception.
In 2010, Trafigura, the world's third-largest private oil and metals trader based in Switzerland, sold an 18.75-percent stake in one of its major energy subsidiaries to a high-ranking and influential Angolan general, Foreign Policy has discovered. The sale, which amounted to $213 million, appears on the 2012 audit of the annual financial statements of a Singapore-registered company, which is wholly owned by Gen. Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento. Details of the sale and purchaser are also buried within a prospectus document of the sold company which was uploaded to the Luxembourg Stock Exchange within the last week. "General Dino," as he's more commonly called in Angola, purchased the 18.75 percent stake not in any minor bauble, but in a $5 billion multinational oil company called Puma Energy International. By 2011, his shares were diluted to 15 percent; but that's still quite a hefty prize: his stake in the company is today valued at around $750 million.
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My Comment: It's good to have friends in high places.
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It Pays To Be A Corrupt African General Updated at :
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Friday, February 14, 2014
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