By Noah Browning, LONDON England
Angola is
seeking other countries’ help to recover state funds lost because of
corruption, Minister of State for Economic Coordination Manuel Jose Nunes
Junior said on Tuesday.
Isabel Dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s former President and Africa's richest woman |
Angolan President Joao Lourenco said on taking
office in 2017 that he would crack down on graft and reform the economy.
“We are activating all the legal, judicial and
diplomatic measures to ensure the repatriation of those resources,” Nunes
Junior said at Chatham House think tank in London.
He declined to say which countries the government
had contacted.
“We are requesting international cooperation to
support this process, to help us look into the cases of corruption we already
identified or the ones we have not found yet,” he said.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy is
ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt nations, in 165th place on a list of
180 countries, according to anti-corruption group Transparency International.
Scrutiny of Angola has increased since the
authorities seized the domestic assets of former first daughter Isabel dos
Santos, accusing the billionaire and her husband of steering payments of more
than $1 billion from state oil company Sonangol and official diamond trading
group Sodiam to companies where they held stakes.
Dos Santos and her husband have denied wrongdoing.
Dos Santos has told Reuters the allegations against her are “completely
unfounded” and accused the authorities of a “witch hunt”.
On Monday, Portuguese authorities said they had
started investigating leaked documents concerning dos Santos’s business empire,
and Portuguese bank Eurobic said it had decided to end commercial relationships
with entities she controls.
Asked about dos Santos, Nunes Junior said the law
was being applied in her case and Angola must be seen as a place that respects
the rule of law.
Angola’s minister of mineral resources and
petroleum, Diamantino Azevedo, added that his country had enlisted the help of
international accounting group Deloitte to list 30% of Sonangol in the next two
years after slashing its non-core businesses, which he called an “octopus”.
Nunes Junior said the government was pushing for
more transparency in foreign exchange markets and would let the kwanza currency
find its level in the market.
The kwanza tumbled to record lows in October after
policy makers, faced with limited foreign currency reserves and subdued oil
prices, abandoned their tight reign on the currency.
Luanda reached a deal with the International
Monetary Fund last December and embark on several reforms - one of which is to
fully unshackle its foreign currency market.
Nunes Junior said the gap between the official
kwanza rate to the dollar and the black market rate had fallen to 19% from 150%
in 2017.
The drop in the kwanza - which weakened 46% against
the dollar in 2018 and 36% in 2019 - has also ramped up inflation pressures,
with year-on-year CPI in December topping 17%.
Nunes Junior said he expected inflation rates to
decline to the single digits by 2022.
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