Banking documents reveal consulting giants’ cash windfall under Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos

Boston Consulting Group, PwC, and McKinsey made tens of millions from a project to modernize state-owned oil company Sonangol, despite red flags indicating corruption.

Three of the world’s largest consulting firms received tens of millions of dollars in payments from an obscure firm in Dubai to help restructure Angola’s corruption-ridden oil sector, according to documents that reveal new details about suspicious money flows described in the globe-spanning Luanda Leaks investigation.

The Dubai firm, Matter Business Solutions, forwarded $31.2 million to Boston Consulting Group, $21.4 to PwC and $15.4 million to McKinsey as part of a 2017 project to modernize Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, according to bank statements and other documents seen by the Portuguese news outlets Expresso and SIC.

Billionaire Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s long-time autocratic ruler, was Sonangol’s chief executive at the time of the payments. Last year, as part of Luanda Leaks, journalists revealed that the Dubai company was owned by a personal friend of dos Santos. The new documents provide a fuller picture of how Western advisors profited from the transfers, which are now under investigation in Angola.

Expresso and SIC were central members of Luanda Leaks, which revealed how secretive deals turned dos Santos into a billionaire and globetrotting bigwig under the presidency of her authoritarian father.

PwC and Boston Consulting were deeply enmeshed in dos Santos’ business affairs, the reporting showed. They retained those relationships long after many Western banks had cut her off amid questions about the source of her wealth. Boston Consulting helped run a failing jewelry business acquired with Angolan money; PwC suggested ways to avoid Angolan taxes and its accountants disregarded red flags about money movements between dos Santos entities that experts say should have raised alarms.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/banking-documents-reveal-consulting-giants-cash-windfall-under-angolan-billionaire-isabel-dos-santos/

US Service Member Injured after Bombs Dropped in Iraq – Iran Suspected – Biden Does Nothing

On Monday rockets were fired into Iraq. Numerous individuals were injured, including an American service member. Biden does nothing.

Biden is too weak to make it out of the basement so it is no surprise that he is unable to do anything about a US service member who was injured yesterday presumably by Iran. The military better get used the way the Biden gang is going to not cover their back.

The Washington Examiner reported:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in no rush to blame Iran for a rocket attack on a military base in northern Iraq that left one civilian contractor dead and several others injured, including a U.S. service member.

After years of former President Donald Trump threatening Tehran with U.S. military force after its attacks in Iraq and other aggressive actions in the region, the Biden administration is vowing to try diplomacy first. But it also has yet to remove a single Trump-era sanction on Iran as it searches for a way to alter the Islamic republic’s behavior.

“We are working in close partnership with Kurdish and Iraqi authorities,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said, noting that the United States has “intelligence holdings” independent of any other entity’s investigation. “We will marry that with information that we develop in tandem with our partners. But again, we are in the early stages of this, and I wouldn’t want to get ahead or prejudge where that investigation may lead.”

The attack in Erbil on Monday reportedly injured five Americans, but the one civilian contractor killed in the assault was not a U.S. citizen. The assault immediately stoked speculation about how President Biden would respond, given that Trump’s administration carried out an airstrike killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani last year after a rocket attack from an Iraqi militia tied to Tehran left another U.S. contractor dead.

Iran now knows they can get away with anything with the Biden gang. This was just a test. Joe Biden has difficulties making it out of his basement so Iran and China and the rest have no fear of the United States now with President Trump in Mar A Lago.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/bombs-dropped-iraq-iran-suspected-us-service-member-injured-biden-nothing/