Son of Former Angolan President Jailed for Fraud

 Charged with stealing U.S.$500 million from the Sovereign Wealth Fund and transferring it to a bank account in Switzerland, José Filomeno dos Santos is the first member of the former first family to be prosecuted as part of an anti-corruption campaign led by President Joao Lourenco. Former President José Eduardo dos Santos's billionaire daughter Isabel dos Santos is also being probed for a long list of crimes, including mismanagement, embezzlement and money laundering during her tenure at the state-run oil giant Sonangol. 

Angola: Court Sentences 'Zenu' Dos Santos to Five Years in Jail

After eight months of trial, the former chairman of the board of the Sovereign Fund of Angola, José Filomeno dos Santos "Zenu", was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison by the Supreme Court.

The son of the former President of the Republic, José Eduardo dos Santos, was one of the most prominent names in the well-known "500 million case", which also involved the former governor of the National Bank of Angola, Valter Filipe, who was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The court also sentenced António Bule to five years in prison and George Gaudens to six years. However, the defence lawyers have already appealed the sentences, with suspensive effect.

The case dates back to August 2017, when the defendants began to set up the scheme for the illegal transfer of USD 500 million from the BNA to a bank account in England.

The convicts' allegation was that the amount would serve as a guarantee for the financing of strategic projects, valued at 35 billion dollars, which would be mobilised from a syndicate of banks on the international market.

Tanzania’s Magufuli kicks off campaign with pledge to create jobs

 Tanzanian President John Magufuli has pledged to improve the economy and complete unfinished projects during a speech that marked the launch of his re-election campaign. 

Magufuli is due to face 14 challengers in his bid to secure a second term in the October 28 election. Some of his opponents include Tundu Lissu, who returned to the country from Belgium in early August where he had sought treatment after surviving a 2017 assassination attempt in which he was shot 16 times.

During his speech on Saturday, the 60-year-old Magufuli promised supporters that, should he get re-elected, his administration will focus on boosting the country’s gross domestic product and completing several projects aimed at making Tanzania “a great nation”. 

“We have the capability to implement these projects. And we will implement them with speed using local resources,” Magufuli said, adding that some of the initiatives include the purchase of five new planes for the national airline, creation of jobs for eight million people and increasing tourism earnings.

Disqualified for ‘unfair reasons’ 

Separately, Tanzanian opposition parties on Friday said widespread irregularities had taken place in the enrolment of their candidates for elections.

Lissu said dozens of candidates from his party for both parliament and local councils had been disqualified for “unfair reasons”. 

“We had 3,754 local council candidates … We have lost 30 percent of them,” he told crowds during a rally in Dar es Salaam as he called for peaceful demonstrations. 

Lissu also said that out of 244 candidates presented for parliament, 53 had been disqualified and that he had demanded that the electoral commission reinstate them.

Another opposition party, the Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo), also denounced on Friday that most of their candidates had been “objected” to. 

Members of the opposition have called for the formation of an independent electoral commission, expressing fears the elections will take place in a climate of violence and intimidation. Magufuli has pledged “free and fair” polls.

The president, who took office in 2015 promising to crack down on corruption and expand the country’s road and railway network, has been accused of narrowing freedoms and increasing authoritarianism.

During his first term, newspapers have been shut down, and the work of non-governmental organisations has been severely restricted, with rights groups and opposition parties accusing Magufuli’s government of curbing human rights. The government has denied seeking to stifle dissent.

New Chinese rules could complicate a sale of TikTok’s US business

 China appears to have complicated efforts to sell TikTok to an American company by introducing new rules that could allow Beijing to veto any potential deal.

The twist in the TikTok saga stems from notices published by the Chinese government on Friday, when officials revised rules that govern the sale of certain kinds of technology to foreign buyers. The updated list includes data processing, speech and text recognition — the kind of tech that experts say is used by the popular short-form video app.

The announcement marked the first time those rules have been revised since 2008. China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology said the changes were meant to “formalize the management of technology export” and “protect national security.”

The notices did not name TikTok or its Beijing-based owner ByteDance, but experts have pointed out that the rule change would likelyrequire ByteDance to obtain government permission before it could sell TikTok to a foreign company.

State-run news agency Xinhua, for example, this weekend cited trade expert Cui Fan as saying that the revisions would cover a sale of TikTok.

ByteDance should”seriously and carefully consider whether it is necessary to suspend substantive negotiations” on a potential deal given the new rules, Cui, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, told Xinhua.

ByteDance General Counsel Erich Andersen said in a statement that the company is studying the new regulations.

“As with any cross-border transaction, we will follow the applicable laws, which in this case include those of the US and China,” he added.

Talk of a sale began as President Donald Trump issued executive orders this month threatening to ban the app unless ByteDance sells its US operations in the coming weeks. Trump and other US politicians have said the app poses a threat to national security. TikTok has denied the allegation and sued the Trump administration over one of the orders, calling it “heavily politicized.”

The app already has a handful of prospective buyers, including Microsoft (MSFT) and Walmart (WMT), which have said they are pursuing a joint bid. The tech firm Oracle (ORCL) is reportedly interested as well.

Pressure on TikTok right now is immense. Last week, CEO Kevin Mayer resigned after less than four months on the job, citing the “sharply changed” political environment.

China’s changes to its export control rules are a way for the country”to exert some leverage over the situation,” according to Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University.

“It will cause any bidder to pause and wonder how to proceed,” he added.

Microsoft and Walmart declined to comment on the new regulations from China. Oracle did not immediately respond to a request outside of working hours.

China has repeatedly pushed back against the Trump administration’s treatment of TikTok, calling it “blatant bullying” in the name of national security.

The latest move could be posturing by Beijing, said Elena Chachko, lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, who added that the government may be engaging in “a tit-for-tat dynamic.

“But China is also “making clear that the United States doesn’t have full control over the future of US TikTok operations and a potential TikTok sale,” she added.

The wildly popular app is known for its endless scroll of dancing videos, lip syncing routines and comedy sketches. But there is also valuable technology of global importance that drives the light-hearted content, according to Nathaniel Rushforth, a cybersecurity and data compliance specialist and lawyer with Da Wo Law Firm in Shanghai.

“While we’re talking about an app that’s for cat videos and dancing, there is some interesting underlying technology that any country would want to protect,” he said, such as the advanced artificial intelligence algorithmsthat help make TikTok’s feed so addictive.

“Beijing wants to protect its ascending status in global technology,” said Shirley Yu, visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and founder of an eponymous company that assesses strategy, business, and political risk for companies working in China.

If the United States succeeds in forcing TikTok to sell key tech to an American company, “China would be concerned that, as its technology companies continue to ascend, more Chinese companies … might be targeted by the United States in a similar way,” she said.

China’s desire to protect homegrown technology, however, is not going to prevent the Trump administration from banning TikTok. It could alsomake it really difficult for ByteDance to sell the app.

If the technology underlying TikTok cannot be sold, nobody is going to want to buy it in the United States, Rushforth said.

“ByteDance and TikTok are really between a rock and a hard place now,” he added.

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Source: CNN

Covid-19: Angola reports 73 new infections and 22 recoveries

 The health authorities registered, in the last 24 hours, 73 new positive cases and 22 recovered patients.

According to the Secretary of State for Public Health, Franco Mufinda, who was updating on the pandemic in the country, there are two cases recorded in the municipality of Cazengo, province of Cuanza Norte, one in Cabinda and the first case in Lunda Sul.

According to Franco Mufinda, the first case of Covid-19 in the province of Lunda Sul, is an Angolan citizen who violated the sanitary fence of Luanda, to go to the city of Saurimo, where he lives.

"Upon his arrival in Saurimo, he was quarantined and samples were collected and sent to the National Institute for the Fight Against AIDS laboratory in Luanda, where he identified himself, on the basis of molecular biology, as a positive case", he asserted.

Among the new cases, he pointed out, whose ages range from 05 to 85 years, are 41 male patients and 33 female patients.

Covid-19: Angolan missionaries return from Kenya

 A group of 19 Angolans who were stranded in the Republic of Kenya due to Covid-19 returned on Saturday to the country in an humanitarian flight from Kenya Airways, organized by the Angolan Embassy in that East African nation.

The group includes nine missionaries from the Catholic Church, four members of the Angolan diplomatic mission in Kenya, five theology students - recently graduated - and one Kenyan resident in Angola, who were unable to return following the suspension of commercial flights.

Speaking to Angop, Friar Wilson Bonito, a theology graduated, said he spent roughly five years in Kenya to complete the training and at the time of his return to Angola he was caught by the restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19.

According to a note from the Angolan Embassy to the Republic of Kenya, the operational costs for the trip were borne by the passengers and the Angolan diplomatic representation.

Oil reform receives market praise

 Angola is making progress with the ongoing reform plans in the oil sector, having launched tenders for works, at the same time that the operator Total is moving towards the restart of offshore drilling (oil exploration at sea).

According to the State-run newspaper “Jornal de Angola”, in its today edition, the assessment, recently published on the Internet, is from the prestigious platform for analysis and studies on the oil sector, Africa Oil and Power.

The publication referred to the opening by National Agency of Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG), last week, of a public tender for the expansion of the national repository of exploration and production data.
 

The work will last for 12 months, with the deadline for registration set for September 18th.
 

On the other hand, the source said, ANPG also launched a tender for consultancy services in order to identify and improve mature fields. The same will be executed in six months with bids until September 21st.
 

For both cases, the first competition is limited to the participation of national companies, but, in the second, foreign companies can compete in the same way.
 

Meanwhile, in mid-August, ANPG launched a public notice for environmental inspection works. This work will have a duration of 12 months and the deadline for bids is September 11, according to the data made available.
 

The production forecast for the country was also released, whose average this year should be slightly below 1.4 million barrels /day.

Production will fall below 1 million bpd in 2025, according to the regulator. The forecast is based on existing production and does not include new developments.
 

Drilling projects
 

The publication by Africa Oil and Power mentions the director of Total in Angola, Olivier Jouny, as saying that the Skyros platform is back in operation at Block 32.

Maersk Voyager will resume work at the end of August, having already left Luanda, according to the official. The company is the first to resume work in West Africa.
Also according to Olivier Jouny, Total is focused on development wells in the short term and will avoid exploration wells that were planned for execution in 2020-21. To this end, the source considers developing Begónia, in Block 17/06, and Chissonga, in Block 16. These would come beyond the Cameia and Golfinho fields, acquired from Sonangol at the end of 2019.
 

Onshore options

Earlier this month, the National Agency for Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG) carried out a transmission through which it established plans for onshore tenders (onshore oil exploration) in the basins of the Lower Congo and Kwanza. It is estimated that the regulator starts the licensing process in the fourth quarter of the year.

Covid-19: More than 1,000 go into lockdown in Angola

 Some 1,145, out of 1,454 covid-19 active patients, have been ordered to stay at home (home isolation), and 309 are being treated in the country's treatment centers, health authorities have said.

The figure is part of statistics released by the State Secretary for Public Health, Franco Mufinda, during a daily covid-19 press conference held in Luanda on Sunday.

 The measure, which are intended to reduce the costs in admission of asymptomatic patients and give room to those in critical health condition, started on 22 August whole country. 

Home quarantine covers national citizens, diplomats and foreigners residing in Angola with negative pre-boarding test, conducted 72 hours before their trip.

 Meanwhile, non-resident foreigners continue to observe institutional quarantine, while the national citizens, who tested positive to covid-19 and without showing symptoms, are required to remain indoors.

Isolation time can last 14 days, depending on the evolution of the disease and the results of the tests.

Angola reported 73 new cases and 22 recovered in the last 24 hours.

The country has also confirmed 2,624 cases, 107 deaths.