S he spun a story the world wanted to believe: a self-made billionaire who had risen in a male-dominated business world in an African country ravaged by civil war and poverty. Wearing her trademark black blazer at the London Business School, the year-old chairwoman told a packed audience that leaders should be chosen on their merits.
That over the years he had awarded her companies public contracts, tax breaks, telecom licenses and diamond-mining rights. And that even as she spoke to the crowd of aspiring entrepreneurs, she was paving the way for one of her most brazen insider deals β the payment of tens of millions of dollars from the state oil monopoly to a company in Dubai controlled by her business partner.
Based on more than , confidential financial and business records and hundreds of interviews, Luanda Leaks offers a case study of a growing global problem: Thieving rulers, often called kleptocrats, and their family members and associates are moving ill-gotten public money to offshore secrecy jurisdictions, often with the help of prominent Western firms. From there, the money is used to buy up properties, businesses and other valuable assets, or it is simply hidden away, safe from tax authorities and criminal investigators.
Public corruption drags down economies, erodes faith in democracy and diverts money that could otherwise be spent on hospitals, schools and roads. Transparency International rates Angola as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The average life expectancy is just The trove contains emails, internal memos from dos Santos companies, contracts, consultant reports, tax returns, private audits and videos of business meetings.
The documents , in Portuguese and English, date back to , but mostly cover the last decade. They include descriptions of palatial homes in Lisbon and Monaco and a deluxe vacation featuring private aircraft and a speedboat. ICIJ found that dos Santos, her husband and their intermediaries built a business empire with more than companies and subsidiaries in 41 countries, including at least 94 in secrecy jurisdictions like Malta, Mauritius and Hong Kong.
