Angola: The Finance Minister and the Kianda Quagmire

Angola's finance minister, Vera Daves de Sousa, has chosen to put her political authority behind officials at the General Tax Administration (AGT) implicated in Maka Angola's investigation into the Kianda companies. After José Leiria, the AGT's former chairman, became Secretary of State for Tax Affairs on 8 September 2026, Daves appointed Bráulio Assis as his chief of staff. The team is moving up the state hierarchy. Questions about its business dealings remain unanswered.

Assis chaired the evaluation committee for the tender that In Pressionante Kianda helped to prepare and went on to win. Messages obtained by Maka Angola show him guiding the bidder he was supposed to assess. By choosing him to head Leiria's office, Daves has publicly expressed political confidence in both men and assumed responsibility for that choice. What ethical standards govern the finance minister's appointments? The issue is not the presumption of innocence. It is the reward for keeping the public in the dark.

This latest instalment in the Kianda investigation adds a still more serious dimension. Reliable sources say that criminal proceedings were stalled within the Attorney General's Office (PGR), the institution responsible for pursuing them.

The contracts secured by In Pressionante Kianda, Kianda In Sana and Carla Trindade from the AGT and other Finance Ministry bodies between 2023 and September 2026 are worth an estimated 4.4 billion kwanzas, Angola's currency. As the criminal case was shelved at the PGR, business continued and the officials implicated rose through the ranks of government.

Let the money through

On 17 October 2024, Salvador Pascoal, who owns 20 per cent of In Pressionante Kianda, filed a complaint with the public prosecutor attached to the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) against Carla Marisa Castelo Trindade and her husband, Mário João Zimas Trindade Martins. He alleged fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, document forgery and criminal association.

According to Maka Angola's sources, the investigation led Luís Mário Quilulo, the prosecutor attached to the SIC, to open criminal case No. 4889/025-F.

Information obtained by Maka Angola suggests that Quilulo failed to have notices served on those concerned: Carla Trindade; her husband, Mário Martins; José Vieira Nuno Leiria, then AGT chairman and now Secretary of State for Tax Affairs; and others. The proceedings were left at a standstill.

Efforts to freeze Carla's personal account at Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI) on suspicion of money laundering met the same fate. The Finance Ministry had paid Kz249 million into that account through the Treasury Single Account, in five transfers between April and October 2025.

Quilulo is said to have invoked Leiria's friendship with Pedro Mendes de Carvalho as a reason for not pursuing the investigation. Carvalho was then head of the National Directorate for Investigation and Criminal Prosecution (DNIAP), within the PGR, and is now Attorney General. Maka Angola has neither confirmed nor disproved that this was the explanation given.

The inclusion of Leiria among those to be notified for questioning and designation as a formal suspect was reportedly used to claim that he was entitled to special jurisdiction and to refer the case to the DNIAP. According to the account given to Maka Angola, this was the route chosen to bury the investigation.

Maka Angola's legal analyst, Rui Verde, identifies two offences that may be relevant: deliberate misconduct in judicial proceedings, known as prevaricação, under Article 349 of Angola's Criminal Code; and assisting an offender to evade justice, or favorecimento pessoal, under Article 351.

The first, Verde explains, occurs "when judges, prosecutors or public officials deliberately act against the law to benefit someone or harm another person". It can involve unlawful acts, failure to perform mandatory duties or decisions contrary to law: failing to serve essential notices, for example, or allowing a case to languish.

The second concerns helping an offender escape justice. It "consists of helping someone who has committed a crime evade investigation, the discovery of the truth or punishment", Verde says. Such assistance "may involve concealing evidence, providing false information, helping someone flee, or any other conduct intended to hinder the authorities and prevent penalties from being enforced".

A company with six days of history

As the legal dispute unfolded, a new company emerged. Kianda In Sana was incorporated in Angola on 8 May 2025 under a power of attorney granted to Neusa Marine Guerreiro. The Portuguese company In Pressionante Wood & Metal, wholly owned by Mário Martins, took a 90 per cent stake. Martins held the remaining 10 per cent directly.

Six days later, on 14 May, the AGT's Administration and Finance Office was already describing it as "a company that has worked with the General Tax Administration on organising and participating in trade fairs and similar events". This prodigious track record was used to justify a Kz72 million contract for the AGT's stand at the Benguela International Fair (FIB). Leiria approved the award on the very day Kianda In Sana was invited to submit a proposal.

On that day, Kianda In Sana did not have a single employee. The AGT had awarded a Kz72 million contract to a phantom company. Only a year later, on 18 May 2026, did it have its first formally registered employee: David André Chiuale, listed as a manager with the National Social Security Institute (INSS). Neither Kianda In Sana nor In Pressionante Kianda had an operating infrastructure of its own. Both used the same address -- Avenida Fidel de Castro Ruiz (Via Expressa), kilometre 24, plot 5, Certave compound, house No. 70 -- supplied by AMA-Africa solely to satisfy formal requirements. Nobody worked there.

The AGT issued the company's tax registration certificate on 15 May. How many trade fairs could Kianda In Sana have organised in six days to earn such a record? Or was the AGT crediting the new company with the earlier company's experience, treating two separate legal entities as one business?

The documents also disagree on Carla's marital status and the couple's matrimonial property regime. The 2025 Angolan deed records a regime of shared ownership of assets acquired during marriage; Wood & Metal's deed of 2 November 2020 specifies separation of property; and Carla's Angolan identity card, issued in 2024, lists her as single. Rui Verde has also challenged the legal basis on which she was granted Angolan nationality in a legal opinion published by Maka Angola. These discrepancies require documentary clarification.

Trade fairs and public money

A year before the award to the new company, on 14 May 2024, the AGT had awarded In Pressionante Kianda Kz57 million for its stand at the Benguela fair. The schedule of deliverables and financial timetable for the 2024 Communications Plan, approved by the AGT, included another Kz45 million for what appears to be the same service.

At the time, Carla Trindade presented the shareholders with a proposed allocation of the AGT's Kz1 billion communications contract that earmarked Kz716.4 million for transfer to Portugal -- equivalent to €785,000 at the exchange rate used in the calculation. She described the allocation as "exactly as discussed with the AGT". What services justified directing so much of the contract to Portugal? Who approved the allocation, and to whom did they account for it?

At the Luanda International Fair (FILDA), held from 23 to 28 July 2024, In Pressionante Kianda secured seven contracts to design, transport, assemble and dismantle stands: Kz30 million from the Department of Administration and Budget Management; Kz27 million from the Public Finance Information and Communication Technology Service; Kz16 million from the Agricultural Development Support Fund; Kz11.2 million from the Angolan Insurance Regulation and Supervision Agency; and Kz11 million each from the Capital Markets Commission, the Competition Regulatory Authority and the Gaming Supervision Institute.

Those seven contracts totalled Kz117.2 million. A further Kz11 million paid by the Finance Ministry for stands for its debt management units brought the itemised total to Kz128.2 million.

Of the Kz30 million awarded by the department responsible for managing the budget, about Kz19 million was allocated to printed bags for giveaways. In a country where children share a pencil to learn to write, the state finds millions to package trade-fair gifts. The contrast exposes the priorities of those who decide how public money is spent.

The contracts were renewed in 2025 and 2026, this time with Kianda In Sana. Through the new company, the same owner's business with the AGT and the Finance Ministry continued.

The money in the personal account

In January and February 2025, Carla Trindade made nine transfers from In Pressionante Kianda's account to her personal BAI account, totalling Kz18 million.

In March 2025, the Luanda District Court suspended the shareholders' resolution that had removed João dos Santos as a manager of In Pressionante Kianda and appointed Mário Martins and Carla Trindade. The interim ruling was provisionally entered in the company register on 12 March.

On 7 April, in case No. 03/25-A, the court ordered a partial freeze on the company's accounts at Banco Caixa Geral Angola, permitting transactions only to pay salaries. The order rested on a preliminary assessment, as required for interim relief, of the Kz1 billion AGT contract and evidence submitted by shareholders João dos Santos and Salvador Pascoal concerning revenue, overbilling and transfers abroad. The managers were also ordered to refrain from any action that would interfere with or diminish the two shareholders' rights.

The freeze was lifted on 25 September 2025. The available court order refers to the reversal of an earlier decision by the court on reconsideration of an interlocutory appeal, and to the failure to request, within 48 hours, that the appeal be sent to the higher court.

With the court having opened that opportunity, Carla Marisa Castelo Trindade made a further 24 transfers from In Pressionante Kianda to her personal BAI account on 22 and 23 October 2025, totalling Kz45.18 million. The following week, from 27 to 29 October, she made another 39 transfers from the company to the same account, totalling Kz59.82 million. Across the two periods, 63 transactions brought her Kz105 million.

The Finance Ministry's five transfers to Carla between April and October 2025 totalled Kz249.02 million. These payments bear a different source reference and are additional to the money received from Kianda. Carla also held individual consultancy contracts with the AGT, already described in this series.

Payments from Carla's personal account to TASIS -- The American School in Portugal -- in February, June and July 2025 totalled Kz49.2 million. These predate the October transfers described above and therefore cannot be presented as the destination of those same funds.

In her right of reply to Maka Angola, Carla sought to distance herself from In Pressionante Kianda, describing it as a company "in which I am not even a shareholder". The absence of a shareholding in her name leaves a question unanswered: on what basis did she receive Kz105 million from the company in her personal account?

The court's suspension of the resolution appointing her as a manager raises another question. Who ordered and authorised these transfers, and under what authority?

What justified moving these sums from the company to Carla's personal account? Were they reimbursements, remuneration, loans or payments on some other basis? Who authorised them, and where are the supporting documents? Accountability requires answers that can be checked.

The transactions may have legal implications on several fronts.

First, dozens of transfers from a company account to a personal account require an explanation of their legal basis. If the payments represent remuneration, profit distributions, expense reimbursements, loans or other legitimate transactions, there should be accounting, tax and corporate records to substantiate them.

Without such justification, the transactions may raise questions of mismanagement causing financial loss, misappropriation of company assets, breach of trust, or tax and accounting violations, depending on the facts established.

The issue becomes particularly significant where company and personal assets are mixed. "One of the fundamental principles of company law is the separation of the company's assets from those of its shareholders, directors or beneficiaries," Verde says. Using a company account to finance private expenses, or regularly transferring substantial company funds to personal accounts without a clearly demonstrated basis, can give rise to suspicion that those assets are being improperly mixed.

That should prompt judicial, tax or regulatory authorities to ask whether the company has any real independence or is merely a vehicle through which those in charge manage their personal affairs.

The transfers may also help establish beneficial ownership: who actually controls the funds and derives the ultimate economic benefit from the company's activities. "Even where a company has a separate legal personality, the authorities may seek to establish whether particular sums received by the company are ultimately channelled to individuals who are, in practice, the final recipients of the funds," Verde says.

"That exercise is particularly important in investigations into corruption, money laundering, tax fraud, conflicts of interest or illicit enrichment," he adds.

In practice, such a situation should trigger tax audits, asset and financial investigations, and an examination of the entities' beneficial ownership. It may also justify piercing the corporate veil -- looking beyond a company's separate legal identity -- if there are indications that it was used to conceal personal assets or mix private and corporate interests.

The choice made by Vera Daves

Daves knew about the allegations long before the recent articles. Correspondence already published by Maka Angola shows that, in September 2024, she received a complaint by Salvador Pascoal from the then Inspector General of State Administration and forwarded it to Leiria, then AGT chairman. Leiria passed it to Carla, who shared it in a WhatsApp group on 7 September. The complaint reached its subject through the very officials empowered to have it investigated. What inquiries did the minister order, and what did they establish?

Neither José Leiria nor Finance Minister Vera Daves de Sousa responded to the questionnaires sent to them by Maka Angola.

Faced with these facts, the minister should immediately have announced that the Finance Ministry would cooperate with the judicial authorities, make the documents available and refer the new information to the Inspectorate General of State Administration, Angola's state oversight body. The ministry should have used its authority to ensure the case was properly examined.

Politically, the appointment of Bráulio Assis on 1 October 2026 signals protection. It strengthens both officials' positions after the revelations about their conduct at the AGT. It is an affront to demands for respect for the law and accountability. Daves herself recommended to the president that Leiria be appointed Secretary of State for Tax Affairs. She then chose Assis to serve as Leiria's chief of staff and remain beside her principal protégé. Responsibility for this show of support is hers.

Why? Why is the minister prepared to sink into this quagmire? Whose interests is she protecting by strengthening the position of those who should be providing explanations?

Vera Daves owes the country an answer.

Read the original article on Maka.

Angola: The Finance Minister and the Kianda Quagmire

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