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Sonangol China oil scheme: Billions 'diverted' in Angola

A syndicate founded by well-connected Cantonese entrepreneurs and their African partners, including Sonangol's chairman and tipped-to-be next President of Angola Manuel Vicente, may have taken control of one of China's most important trade channels and diverted billions of dollars to a few dozens of pockets, an article on The Economist suggests.

'Operating out of offices in Hong Kong’s Queensway, the syndicate calls itself China International Fund or China Sonangol. Over the past seven years it has signed contracts worth billions of dollars for oil, minerals and diamonds from Africa. These deals are shrouded in secrecy. However, they appear to grant the Queensway syndicate remarkably profitable terms. If that is right, then they would be depriving some of the world’s poorest people of desperately needed wealth. Because the syndicate has done deals with the regimes in strife-torn places, such as Zimbabwe and Guinea, it may also have indirectly helped sustain violent conflicts', the British magazine accuses.

'In short, it looks as if the fortunes of entire African countries depend to a significant degree on the actions of a little-known, opaque and unaccountable business syndicate', the article suggests.

Cold war friendships

The syndicate was reportedly built on links forged during the cold war between a Chinese national named Sam Pa (born Xu Jinghua) and the African counterparts he met at a Soviet academy in Baku (also attended by Angola's President Dos Santos). Sam Pa is believed to exert control over the syndicate through Veronica Fung, rumoured to be a member of his family. 'She controls 70% of a core company, Newbright International. The two frequently travel in Africa, using the syndicate’s fleet of Airbus jets. They are said sometimes to bypass customs', The Economist tells.

The remaining 30% of Newbright is controlled by the daughter of a Chinese general, Lo Fong Hung, married to Wang Xiangfei, a well-connected banker. 'Although the Queensway syndicate has sometimes been suspected of being an arm of the Chinese government, there is little evidence of that', the magazine states.

'Indeed, it has often been the butt of criticism from Chinese officials. More likely it was set up to take advantage of a new strategy by the Chinese government, known as the “going out” policy', is read on the article.

Much promised...

Sam Pa teamed up Hélder Bataglia, a Portuguese trader who had grown up in Angola and had links to Latin America, to invest both in Africa and South America. While contacts with Argentina and Venezuela turned out to be fruitless, the syndicate signed several deals with African countries like Angola, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea, to trade minerals for infrastructure — 'in return for commodities, Chinese contractors would build housing and highways', The Economist explains.

In late 2004, Pa travelled to Angola and reportedly persuaded the Angolan elite to channel the country's growing oil exports to China through a new joint venture, called China Sonangol. Mr Vicente, boss of Angola’s Sonangol, reportedly became CS's chairman. President Dos Santos son is rumoured to be a director at CS as well. Contracts, signed in 2005, gave the company the right to act as 'a middleman between Sonangol and Sinopec, one of China’s oil majors'.

'China Sonangol threw itself into the business, according to Angolan oil ministry records and applications for bank loans backed by oil shipments. The official statistics are incomplete, but good sources have concluded that almost all of China’s imports of oil from Angola—worth more than $20 billion last year—come from China Sonangol. By contrast, China’s state-owned oil companies have no direct interest in Angolan oilfields, one of their two biggest sources of crude. Their names do not show up on the map of concessions'.

'By 2009 the Queensway syndicate spanned the globe from Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire to Russia and North Korea and on to Indonesia, Malaysia and America. It had bought the JPMorgan Chase building at 23 Wall Street in New York'.

...little done

At the same time, Angola and Sonangol are rumoured to have lost millions while dealing with China through the Hong Kong-based company: 'The terms under which China Sonangol buys oil from Angola have never been made public. However, several informed observers say that the syndicate gets the oil from the Angolan state at a low price that was fixed in 2005 and sells it on to China at today’s market prices. The price at which the contract was fixed is confidential, but Brent crude stood at just under $55 a barrel in 2005; today it is trading above $100. In other words, the syndicate’s mark up could be substantial. Over the years, considering the volume of oil that is being sold to China, its profit could amount to tens of billions of dollars'.

According to data from the IMF and the World Bank quoted by The Economist, 'billions of dollars have disappeared from Sonangol’s accounts'.

While Dos Santos, Manuel Vicente and other Angolan, Chinese and Portuguese individuals are accused by The Economist of making billions out of the Queensway scheme, Angola signed a 'bad deal'. Six years after the syndicate arrived in Luanda, more than 90% of the residents of the capital remain without running water and most of the much promised infrastructure hasn't been built.

Dos Santos, Vicente and other mentioned individuals have reportedly refused to talk to The Economist. In Angola, Portugal and China there was little - if any - coverage or reaction to the article.

Renewed fears of civil war in Mozambique

RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama has warned that Mozambique could be 'divided in little pieces' if the FRELIMO Government doesn't enact a 'departization' of the State. In an exclusive interview to the Portuguese news agency Lusa and the Lisbon based weekly newspaper SOL, Dhlakama declared that 'democracy is disappearing' in Mozambique.

'There's no party alternation.(...) A Government of transition should 'departize' the State. Nowadays, even a school student needs to attend a FRELIMO rally to progress. We want to end this in a peaceful fashion. If they don't accept that, Mozambique will be cut in half', said Dhlakama in August. 'Didn't that just happen in Sudan?', he asked.

The opposition leader left the capital Maputo two years ago and is living in Nampula, in the North. Dhlakama has recently announced plans to regroup former RENAMO guerilla fighters not only in the North, but throughout the country to launch a 'revolution'.

In early September, Dhlakama issued a new threat, vowing to topple Armando Guebuza's Government by December 2011.

Most RENAMO fighters were demobilized under the United Nations supervision in 1994, immediately prior to the country's first multi-party parliamentary and presidential elections that ended a 16 year-long civil war, one of the bloodiest proxy conflicts between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War. RENAMO, a right-wing party, was reportedly funded by the United States, South Africa and South Rhodesia's white resistance (nowadays Zimbabwe). FRELIMO had extensive ties to the Soviet Union and China.

Most RENAMO fighters have since returned to civilian life or joined the the new national army of Mozambique. RENAMO never fully demobilized, though, keeping a small forced described as a 'Presidential Guard', based in the central districts of Maringue and Cheringoma.

Despite growing popular anger against Guebuza, there are serious doubts about RENAMO's ability to launch a military campaign against FRELIMO. Most former right-wing fighters are now old and unwilling to abandon civilian life, and there are no signs that RENAMO is raising much needed money for its military operations.