Politicians and businesspeople in both countries say that Angola is dominated by allies of the president with tentacles in every corner of the economy, allowing them to amass great fortunes in politically connected deals under mysterious circumstances.
As Angola’s ruling elite sought to safeguard its wealth outside their country — knowing that Mr. dos Santos’s rule would eventually end — Portugal’s political and business elite more than obliged.
“If Angola was the front office of corruption, Portugal was the back office,” said João Batalha, the president of the Portuguese chapter of Transparency International.
In a scathing report, the O.E.C.D.’s working group on bribery said that Portugal’s “enforcement of the foreign bribery offense has been extremely low” — pointing out that cases involving Angola accounted for a third of all such bribery allegations against Portuguese firms. In a March report on money laundering and financial crimes, the United States State Department said, “Suspect funds from Angola are used to purchase Portuguese businesses and real estate.”
Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said that the Portuguese judicial system investigated illicit investments without political interference. He said it had been a “mistake” for one of his predecessors, responding to news media reports that high-ranking Angolans were being investigated in Portugal, to visit Angola and apologetically take the Angolans’ side.
