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Korruption & Misswirtschaft

Diese Medienberichte sollen deutlich machen, wie hemmungslos Herrschaftscliquen afrikanischer Länder sich am Vermögen ihrer Völker bereichern, und zugleich sollen sie auf das Versagen unserer Politiker hinweisen, auf diesen Skandal angemessen zu reagieren.
Für Übersetzungen empfiehlt sich www.deepl.com/translator

20.02.2024
Nigeria Kenya

William Ruto and Bola Tinubu: Africa's 'flying presidents' under fire

(mehr)

16.01.2024
Nigeria

AFRIKA/NIGERIA - Vorsitzender der Bischofskonferenz: “Korruption ist außer Kontrolle geraten

(mehr)

10.11.2023
Nigeria

Nigerias Präsident sorgt mit Millionenausgaben für Ärger in der Bevölkerung


(mehr)

02.11.2023
Nigeria

Nigeria's House of Representatives reject plan to buy presidential yacht

(mehr)

29.10.2023
Congo

Congo spent seven-times over budget on Francophone Games

(mehr)

04.09.2023
Gabun

Palastrevolte in Libreville

(mehr)

02.09.2023
Gabun

Ali Babas Höhle in Gabun: Schwindelerregende Millionenbeträge entdeckt

(mehr)

12.07.2023
Mosambik

Mosambiks Ex-Finanzminister an die USA ausgeliefert

(mehr)

11.07.2023
Äthiopien

Abiy Ahmed lässt sich einen milliardenteuren Palast bauen

(mehr)

12.06.2023
Südafrika

Kein Licht am Ende des Tunnels

(mehr)

12.06.2023
Simbabwe

Wie man 100 Millionen Dollar Schwarzgeld wäscht

(mehr)

10.06.2023
Nigeria

Nigerias Inlandsgeheimdienst nimmt Zentralbankchef fest

(mehr)

05.06.2023
Congo

GiveDirectly loses $900,000 in DRC mobile cash fraud

(mehr)

05.06.2023
Ethiopia

WFP leadership in Ethiopia resigns amid aid diversion probe

(mehr)

03.05.2023
Zimbabwe

Bona Mugabe owns Dubai mansion

(mehr)

24.04.2023
Sudan

Schmuggelgeschäfte mit dem Kreml und eine Mine namens Schweiz

(mehr)

27.03.2023
Uganda

Iron sheets scandal has top government officials on a tightrope

(mehr)

28.02.2023
Südafrika

Auf dem Weg zum Gangsterstaat

(mehr)

07.12.2022
Uganda

Who paid the price for Uganda’s refugee fraud scandal (and who didn’t)?

(mehr)

27.11.2022
Kamerun

Seit 6.11.2022: Paul Biya herrscht in Kamerun seit 40 Jahren

(mehr)

25.11.2022
Malawi

Malawi vice president arrested over corruption, says graft watchdog

(mehr)

16.11.2022
Côte d’Ivoire

Trafic de cocaïne

(mehr)

10.10.2022
Afrika

Afrikas Seehäfen: Den Sumpf der Korruption trockenlegen

(mehr)

18.09.2022
Kongo

"Unmoral und Inkompetenz“

(mehr)

18.09.2022
Gabun

Oppositionspolitiker Guy Nzouba Ndama bei Rückkehr aus dem Kongo mit 1,8 Mio. Euro in Geldkoffern im Auto festgenommen

(mehr)

23.08.2022
Nigeria

USA geben Nigeria 23 Millionen Dollar zurück, die Diktator Abacha geraubt hatte

(mehr)

20.07.2022
Africa

Timber trafficking: The hidden history of looting

(mehr)

22.06.2022
Africa

Swiss commodities giant Glencore pleads guilty to bribery charges in Africa

(mehr)

09.06.2022
Südafrika

Wie die Gupta-Brüder in Südafrika die Strippen zogen

(mehr)

27.05.2022
Gambia

How ex-Gambia President Yahya Jammeh's US mansion was seized

(mehr)

08.05.2022
Afrika

Afrika, der reiche Kontinent – und ein Hort der Ungleichheit

(mehr)

27.04.2022
Afrika

Fünf Länder besitzen mehr als 50% des Privatvermögens des afrikanischen Kontinents

(mehr)

26.04.2022
Elfenbeinküste

Holzhandel in der Elfenbeinküste: Die Affäre, die den Sturz von Alain-Richard Donwahi beschleunigte.

(mehr)

19.04.2022
South Africa

Ramaphosa’s ‘step aside’ rule for corrupt ANC leaders ‘not working’ says key ally

(mehr)

21.03.2022
Nigeria

Want to be president? Here is how much it will cost you…

(mehr)

08.03.2022
Kenya

Designation of Former Nairobi Governor Sonko for Involvement in Significant Corruption

(mehr)

13.02.2022
Eswatini

Ein Königreich für einen Rolls-Royce

(mehr)

12.02.2022
Senegal

Präsident schenkt Afrikameistern satte Prämie und Grundstücke

(mehr)

24.01.2022
Malawi

Malawi’s president dissolves cabinet over corruption allegations

(mehr)

06.01.2022
South Africa

South Africa's Zondo commission report: Scandal, bullying and fear

(mehr)

05.01.2022
Africa

Corrupt political and financial elites collude to steal public funds

(mehr)

11.12.2021
Angola

Angolan Billionaire Isabel Dos Santos Hit With US Sanctions For 'significant Corruption'

(mehr)

19.11.2021
DR Congo

Data leak: Millions transferred to Joseph Kabila allies


(mehr)

03.10.2021
Kenya

Pandora Papers: Uhuru Kenyatta family's secret assets exposed by leak

(mehr)

01.10.2021


“Die Korruption ist das System”

(mehr)

28.09.2021
Südafrika

Der schwierige Kampf gegen Korruption

(mehr)

12.09.2021
Zimbabwe etc.

British American Tobacco negotiated bribe for Mugabe, new evidence suggests

(mehr)

01.09.2021
G5 Sahel

Scandale financier au G5 Sahel

(mehr)

27.08.2021
Südafrika


Tödliche Schüsse auf südafrikanische Informantin in Korruptionsskandalen


(mehr)

24.08.2021
Mozambique

Mozambique 'tuna bond' scandal: Ex-President Guebuza's son on trial

(mehr)

24.08.2021
Mozambique

Mozambique 'tuna bond' scandal

(mehr)

23.08.2021
Nigeria

Hochzeit in Nigeria

(mehr)

22.08.2021
Nigeria

Nigeria's royal wedding: Private jets, glitz and glamour

(mehr)

01.08.2021
Äquatorialguinea

Äquatorialguinea25 Luxusautos, eine 100-Millionen-Jacht und ein Stadtpalais in Paris – doch der afrikanische Playboy hatte das alles gestohlen

(mehr)

30.07.2021
Angola

Isabel dos Santos ordered to return $500 million in energy shares to Angola

(mehr)

28.07.2021
Equatorial Guinea

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue and his love of Bugattis and Michael Jackson

(mehr)

24.07.2021
Uganda

Outrage after Uganda MPs get $30m to buy cars amid COVID crisis

(mehr)

23.07.2021
Eswatini

Afrikas letzter absoluter Monarch

(mehr)

11.07.2021
Kamerun

Paul Biya: Kameruns Präsident erneut auf dem Weg nach Genf


(mehr)

15.06.2021
Afrika

Warum afrikanische Präsidenten nach ewiger Immunität streben

(mehr)

13.06.2021
Malawi

Expulsion of Diplomats From South Africa

(mehr)

30.05.2021
Africa

Africa's political dynasties: How presidents groom their sons for power

(mehr)

18.05.2021
Nigeria

James Ibori: UK returns $5.8m stolen by ex-governor to Nigeria

(mehr)

12.05.2021
Nigeria

$153 million, 80 houses recovered from Diezani — EFCC boss

(mehr)

07.04.2021
South Sudan

Corruption claims spark new concerns about aid to South Sudan

(mehr)

07.03.2021
Nigeria

Why Buhari’s government is losing the anti-corruption war

(mehr)

03.03.2021
South Africa

How Zuma uses war metaphor ...

(mehr)

27.02.2021
Südafrika

Südafrikas Ex-Präsident

(mehr)

26.02.2021
Togo

Bolloré Group fined €12 million in Togo corruption case

(mehr)

19.02.2021
South Africa

South Africa’s president fights own party over corruption

(mehr)

18.02.2021
Südafrika

Fünf vor acht / Korruption in der Corona-Pandemie

(mehr)

14.02.2021
Nigeria

Ganoven schlagen illegalen Gewinn aus der Pandemie

(mehr)

12.02.2021
Zimbabwe

Mugabe’s business empire

(mehr)

28.01.2021
Nigeria

Sani Abacha - the hunt for the billions stolen by Nigeria's ex-leader

(mehr)

28.01.2021
Afrika

Afrika-ABC in Zitaten: Korruption

(mehr)

19.01.2021
Angola

Ein Jahr nach den Luanda Leaks: Kehrt Isabel dos Santos zurück?

(mehr)

15.01.2021
Switzerland

‘There may be God up there, but not me,’ says Beny Steinmetz

(mehr)

04.01.2021
Südafrika

Leopardenfell gegen Richterrobe

(mehr)

06.12.2020
Ghana

Wahl in Ghana - Krokodil gegen Alligator

(mehr)

02.12.2020
Algérie

Rafik Khalifa : des milliards à la prison d’El Harrach, la déchéance d’un golden boy algérien

(mehr)

23.11.2020
Zimbabwe

Mnangagwa’s capture of judiciary a red flag for state failure

(mehr)

20.11.2020
Africa

African Union: Theft, intimidation, nepotism allegations against AU body

(mehr)

16.11.2020
Africa

How Western companies undermine African democracy

(mehr)

16.11.2020
Malawi

„PROPHET“ SHEPHERD BUSHIRI: Wunderprediger auf der Flucht

(mehr)

11.11.2020
Südafrika

Haftbefehl für ANC-Generalsekretär

(mehr)

11.11.2020
Egypt

Egypt poll recalls Mubarak-era political corruption

(mehr)

09.11.2020
Somalia

Italian NGO pulls out of Somalia due to ‘systematic fraud’

(mehr)

15.10.2020
Angola

Angola’s anti-corruption crusade tide turns against João Lourenço

(mehr)

07.10.2020
Südafrika

Korrupte ANC-Politiker verhaftet

(mehr)

29.09.2020
Afrika

Afrikanische Staaten verlieren 89 Milliarden Dollar jährlich durch illegale Kapitalflucht

(mehr)

25.09.2020
Congo DRC

Illicit DRC gold: London Bullion Market must do more to stop it

(mehr)

24.09.2020
Kenya

Kenya officials accused of Covid-19 corruption

(mehr)

16.09.2020
Mauretanie

Mauritanie, la saisie des fonds de l’ex Président Aziz

(mehr)

16.09.2020
Afrika

Afrikas Schuldenlast drückt immer schwerer

(mehr)

08.09.2020
Afrika

Die große Abzocke bei Rüstungsdeals

(mehr)

02.09.2020
South Africa

Coronavirus in South Africa: Misuse of Covid-19 funds 'frightening'

(mehr)

23.08.2020
South Africa

Ramaphosa: ANC deeply implicated in corruption

(mehr)

20.08.2020
Mauretanie

L’incroyable liste des détournements de l’ex Président Aziz

(mehr)

14.08.2020
Angola

José Filomeno dos Santos: Son of Angola's ex-leader jailed for five years

(mehr)

06.08.2020
Niger

How a Notorious Arms Dealer Hijacked Niger’s Budget and Bought Weapons From Russia

(mehr)

04.08.2020
Südafrika

Die Korruptionsskandale des ANC

(mehr)

29.07.2020
Afrika

Wie Corona und Korruption einander begünstigen

(mehr)

27.07.2020
Südafrika

Korruptionsskandal um Coronahilfe erschüttert Südafrika

(mehr)

27.07.2020
Congo

‘Ebola business’ concerns resurface as new Congo outbreak spreads

(mehr)

20.07.2020
Deutschland

BMZ-Brief zu Korruption

(mehr)

17.07.2020
NIgeria

Nigeria’s EFCC boss suspended from office following secret tribunal

(mehr)

09.07.2020
Republic of Congo

THE CYCLE OF KLEPTOCRACY: A CONGOLESE STATE AFFAIR

(mehr)

07.07.2020
RDC

Où sont passés les millions de la lutte contre le coronavirus?


(mehr)

06.07.2020
RDC

Le lanceur d’alerte Claude Mianzuila détenu à Mbuji-Mayi

(mehr)

04.07.2020
Nigeria

Instagram star flaunted lavish lifestyle but was actually conspiring to launder hundreds of millions of dollars, US prosecutors say

(mehr)

04.07.2020
Kenia

Korruption untergräbt den Kampf gegen Covid-19

(mehr)

24.06.2020
Niger

Affaire audit - Ministère de Défense Nationale

(mehr)

23.06.2020
3rd World

We know more about fraud and abuse in aid. It’s time to stop it.

(mehr)

21.06.2020
Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe anti-corruption body starts audit of the rich

(mehr)

21.06.2020
Kongo

Harte Strafe für Kabinettschef im Kongo

(mehr)

20.06.2020
Zimbabwe

Coronavirus: Zimbabwe health minister in court on corruption charges


(mehr)

18.06.2020
Afrique

Ces jets privés qui transportent les Présidents africains malgré l’épidémie

(mehr)

18.06.2020
Congo

How ‘Ebola business’ threatens aid operations in Congo

(mehr)

11.06.2020
Congo

Congo aid scam triggers sector-wide alarm

(mehr)

03.06.2020
Angola

Isabel dos Santos mobilises her last line of loyal supporters

(mehr)

31.05.2020
weltweit

Wie Journalisten Korruption mit Corona-Geld aufdecken sollen

(mehr)

28.05.2020
Cameroun

Les milliards distribués aux députés font polémique

(mehr)

25.05.2020
Niger

76 milliards de fcfa détournés

(mehr)

13.05.2020
NIgeria

Nigeria arrests Chinese over $250.000 cash bribe for corruption cover-up

(mehr)

13.05.2020
Angola

Angola: On the Trail of Stolen Billions

(mehr)

12.05.2020
R d Congo

Soupçon du détournement de près de 50 millions de dollars

(mehr)

09.05.2020
Ethiopia

Ethiopia jails ex-minister for corruption

(mehr)

09.05.2020
Soudan

La corruption sous l'Ex-Président Béchir dépasse l'imagination

(mehr)

08.05.2020
Nigeria

Abacha's loot

(mehr)

07.05.2020
Zimbabwe

ZACC Arrests Registrar General Over Tender Irregularities

(mehr)

06.05.2020
Afrika

Missbrauch von Corona-Hilfen

(mehr)

08.04.2020
Gabon

Disparition de 353 conteneurs de bois précieux saisis par la justice

(mehr)

02.04.2020
Mali

Contrats d’armement surfacturés au Mali : des proches d’IBK dans le viseur de la justice

(mehr)

18.03.2020
 Kenya

Study reveals scale of foreign aid diversion offshore

(mehr)

03.03.2020
Niger

L’armée ébranlée par un scandale de détournements sur les commandes d’armements

(mehr)

08.02.2020
Rép. du Congo

Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso a été mis en examen par la justice française

(mehr)

23.01.2020
Subsaharan Africa

Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)

Bleak picture of inaction against corruption


(mehr)

22.01.2020
Elfenbeinküste

Eine Stadt wie ein Freilichtmuseum des Grössenwahnsinns

(mehr)

20.01.2020
Angola

"Luanda Leaks"

(mehr)

20.01.2020
Angola

Deutsches Geld für reichste Frau Afrikas

(mehr)

16.01.2020
Angola

Africa’s top billionaire uses Malta shell companies to hold diamonds ‘conflict’

(mehr)

19.12.2019
Guinée équatoriale

« Biens mal acquis » : les « facilitateurs » français dans le viseur de la justice

(mehr)

17.12.2019
Angola

Angola recovers more than $5bn in stolen assets

(mehr)

15.12.2019
Zimbabwe

L’épouse du vice-président arrêtée pour corruption


(mehr)

09.12.2019
Angola

José Filomeno dos Santos: Son of Angola's ex-leader in 'extraordinary' trial

(mehr)

01.12.2019
Namibia

Corruption in Namibia’s fishing industry unveiled

(mehr)

14.11.2019
Swasiland

König von Swasiland kauft 19 Rolls-Royce und 120 BMW, während sein Volk hungert

(mehr)

24.10.2019
UK

Billions Worth Of Private Jets, Superyachts, And Mansions Have Been Bought With Corrupt Wealth

(mehr)

01.10.2019
Kenya

«Die Korruption ist gewissermassen in unserem Staatsbudget enthalten»

(mehr)

23.09.2019
Simbabwe

Mugabes Witwe darf angehäufte Reichtümer behalten

(mehr)

22.09.2019
Republik Kongo

Sassou-Nguessos Krokodillederschuhe

(mehr)

17.08.2019
Afrika

Diäten

Gut gepolstert: Abgeordnete in Afrika


(mehr)

14.08.2019
Ghana

A corruption scandal is in the news in Ghana again

(mehr)

05.08.2019
Ghana

Lessons to be learnt from Ghana’s excess electricity shambles

(mehr)

01.08.2019
Mali

« le système est infesté par la corruption »


(mehr)

07.07.2019
Gabon

L’entreprise Santullo réclame un demi-milliard d’euros de factures impayés à l’État gabonais

(mehr)

03.07.2019
Niger

Niger : « L’organisation du sommet de l’UA a été un grand défi pour le pays »

(mehr)

10.06.2019
Afrika

Der Griff in die Staatskasse

(mehr)

08.06.2019
Äquatorialguinea

Ärger für Diktatorensohn Prinz Protz

(mehr)

09.05.2019
Gabon

Disparition de 353 conteneurs de bois précieux

(mehr)

24.04.2019
Ghana

Mahama’s Minister Bypassed Parliament In Reviewing $200m Housing Deal

(mehr)

20.04.2019
Sudan

Sudan crisis: Cash hoard found at al-Bashir's home

(mehr)

28.03.2019
Gambia

Jammeh ‘ran the country like an organised crime syndicate’

(mehr)

21.03.2019
South Sudan

South Sudan spends millions on cars, homes instead of peace

(mehr)

05.03.2019
Liberia

Ex-Liberian president's son charged over missing money scandal

(mehr)

05.02.2019
Südafrika

Erschreckende Einblicke in die Korruption in Südafrika

(mehr)

01.02.2019
Nigeria

Nigeria: 22 millions de barils de pétrole volés en six mois

(mehr)

29.01.2019
Mosambik

Wenn 500 Millionen Dollar einfach verschwinden

(mehr)

28.01.2019
Liberia

Protesters ask George Weah about missing millions

(mehr)

11.12.2018
Mozambique

Mozambique busts '30,000 ghost workers'

(mehr)

05.12.2018
Uganda

Korruption und Flüchtlingshilfe

(mehr)

26.11.2018
Nigeria

Nigeria could lose $6bn from 'corrupt' oil deal linked to fraud

(mehr)

25.10.2018
Kamerun

Eine Villa als Lohn der Lüge

(mehr)

15.10.2018
Südafrika

In Südafrika plündern Manager und Politiker die VBS Bank aus / 130 Millionen Euro Schaden.

(mehr)

26.09.2018
Angola

L'arrestation du fils de dos Santos

(mehr)

20.09.2018
Liberia

100 Millionen Dollar verschwunden

(mehr)

18.09.2018
Zambia

UK suspends funding over corruption fears

(mehr)

25.08.2018
Mosambik

Die Pleitegeier aus Maputo

(mehr)

14.08.2018
Cameroon

Cameroon Calls on Mercury for Media Relations Work

(mehr)

26.07.2018
Süd-Sudan

South Sudan spends $16m on cars for MPs

(mehr)

11.06.2018
Kenya

National Youth Service scam

(mehr)

26.05.2018
Westafrika

West Africa Leaks: Westafrikas verschwundene Steuergelder

(mehr)

19.05.2018
NIgeria

Rückführung von veruntreutem Staatsvermögen

(mehr)

04.04.2018
Niger

Un échangeur pour 42,5 milliards FCFA (= 64 Mio. Euro)

(mehr)

24.03.2018
Zimbabwe

Police investigate former first lady Grace Mugabe

(mehr)

18.02.2018
Cameroon

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, likes to travel abroad.

(mehr)

25.11.2017
Niger

LANGUE SERPENTINE : LE PRÉSIDENT MILLIARDAIRE DU NIGER, LE PAYS LE PLUS PAUVRE DU MONDE.

(mehr)

12.11.2017
Afrika

Paradise Papers

(mehr)

05.11.2017
Afrika

Rotes Kreuz in Afrika veruntreut sechs Millionen Dollar

(mehr)

27.10.2017
Guinée équatoriale

Teodorín Obiang condamné à trois ans de prison

(mehr)

27.10.2017
Equatorial Guinea

President Obiang's son given suspended sentence in French trial


(mehr)

25.10.2017
Afrika

Plündern als Prinzip

(mehr)

17.10.2017
Afrika

Panama Papers

(mehr)

27.09.2017
Afrika

Abgeordneten-Gehälter – Berlin bescheidener als Afrika

(mehr)

17.09.2017
Kenya

le juge David Maraga retourne 5 millions de dollars

(mehr)

12.09.2017
Sénégal

Président nomme son frère Aliou à la tête de la Caisse des dépôts

(mehr)

28.08.2017
Nigeria

Nigeria seizes N7.6b from Diezani Alison-Madueke

(mehr)

26.08.2017
Guinea

Illegale Zahlungen an Guineas Militärjunta

(mehr)

19.08.2017
Angola

Angola – im Reich einer Clique

(mehr)

14.08.2017
Kenia

Portrait Uhuru Kenyatta

(mehr)

21.07.2017
Republic of Congo

$750 million in mining revenues fails to reach treasury

(mehr)

27.06.2017
Nigeria

'mystery man' Kolawole 'Kola' Aluko

(mehr)

27.06.2017
Angola

le parachute doré du président José Eduardo dos Santos


(mehr)

27.06.2017
Niger

LE PRÉSIDENT MILLIARDAIRE DU NIGER

(mehr)

26.06.2017
Congo

President’s daughter charged with corruption in France

(mehr)

20.06.2017
Äquatorialguinea

Der korrupte Präsidentensohn

(mehr)

03.06.2017
Canada

Des palais africains aux condos québécois

(mehr)

28.04.2017
Tansania

Präsident entlässt Tausende Beamte - wegen gefälschter Abschlüsse

(mehr)

13.04.2017
Nigeria

Nigeria's EFCC 'finds $43m in Lagos flat'

(mehr)

23.01.2017
Africa

Yahya Jammeh: Other leaders accused of looting the coffers

(mehr)

23.01.2017
Gambia

Gambia's former leader Yahya Jammeh 'made off with millions and luxury cars'

(mehr)

07.01.2017
Äquatorialguinea

Eine Pest namens Korruption

(mehr)

28.12.2016
Nigeria

Nigeria streicht Zehntausenden „Geisterbeamten“ das Gehalt

(mehr)

03.11.2016
Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea's VP Obiang's cars seized in Switzerland

(mehr)

06.10.2016
Afrika

Nepotismus

(mehr)

12.09.2016
South Sudan

Leaders Amass Great Wealth as Nation Suffers, Report Says

(mehr)

23.08.2016
Malawi

Corruption getting worse

(mehr)

05.06.2016
NIgeria

„Gestohlene“ 10 Milliarden

(mehr)

04.06.2016
Nigeria

Nigeria says it has recovered $9.1 billion in stolen money and assets

(mehr)

18.05.2016
Zimbabwe

Missing $15 billion diamond revenue

(mehr)

25.04.2016
Nigeria

Une locomotive dans l'impasse ?

(mehr)

22.04.2016
Afrika

Biens mal acquis : saisie à Paris et à Nice de propriétés de la famille Bongo

(mehr)

14.04.2016
Afrika

Afrikas Reiche plündern ihren Kontinent (Panama Papers)

(mehr)

13.04.2016
Somalia

Aufbruchstimmung in Mogadiscio

(mehr)

05.04.2016
Afrika

Panama Papers: Diese Afrikaner stehen unter Druck

(mehr)

03.04.2016
Afrika

The Panama Papers

(mehr)

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The New Yorker

Extreme City

By Michael Specter

Earlier this year, I was invited to a barbecue at the home of a Texas oilman, Steve Espinosa, and his wife, Norma. Their two-story house sat on an unnamed road, nestled in a community called the Condominio Riviera Atlantico, about ten miles from Luanda, the rapidly expanding capital of Angola. There were no sidewalks or footpaths in the area, and there wasn’t much movement on the street. But there were plenty of cars: Porsche Cayennes, Audis, and BMWs, all tucked neatly into identical carports adjacent to identical houses. Espinosa, a burly man in cargo shorts and a Brooklyn Industries T-shirt, answered the door and held out a beer. He steered me through a sparsely furnished living room, past a humidor filled with Cuban cigars, and onto the patio, where several of his friends and colleagues were snacking amiably on ostrich meat. There was a second kitchen beside the pool in the back yard, with a sink, a large refrigerator, and a Weber grill.

For the past two years, Luanda—not Tokyo, Moscow, or Hong Kong—has been named, by the global consulting firm Mercer, as the world’s most expensive city for expatriates. Luanda’s lure, and its treasure, is oil. José Eduardo dos Santos, who has presided over Angola for more than thirty-five years, long ago realized that foreign oil companies were the key to power, and he has worked diligently to accommodate them. In the past decade, tens of thousands of American and European employees of international oil conglomerates, fortified by generous cost-of-living allowances, have descended on Luanda. (Multinational companies base their overseas salaries on the comparative costs of housing, clothes, food, and other commodities.)

The country now produces 1.8 million barrels of oil a day; in Africa, only Nigeria produces and exports more. The boom has transformed a failed state into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, the French company Total, and BP all have significant operations in Angola, along with firms—Schlumberger and Halliburton among them—that provide the complicated logistical support required to drill and maintain deep offshore wells. Most of the foreign workers live with their families in well-guarded suburban communities with names such as Bella Vista and Paraíso Riviera.

At the height of the British Empire, colonial rulers lived by a credo: “Make the world England.’’ The oil expatriates of Luanda have taken that message to heart. Few would work there if they couldn’t live as they do at home, but their comforts have been hard to come by. Almost nothing is made in Angola, so nearly every car, computer, crate of oranges, tin of caviar, jar of peanut butter, pair of bluejeans, and bottle of wine arrives by boat. Every day, a trail of container ships backs up from the port through the Bay of Luanda and out into the sea.

Grotesque inequality long ago became a principal characteristic of the world’s biggest and most crowded cities. But there is no place quite like Luanda, where the Espinosas’ rent is sixteen thousand dollars a month, a bottle of Coke can sell for ten dollars, and Range Rovers cost twice their sticker price. Per-capita income in Angola has nearly tripled in the past dozen years, and the country’s assets grew from three billion dollars to sixty-two billion dollars. Nonetheless, by nearly every accepted measure, Angola remains one of the world’s least-developed nations. Half of Angolans live on less than two dollars a day, infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world, and the average life expectancy—fifty-two—is among the lowest. Obtaining water is a burden even for the rich, and only forty per cent of the population has regular access to electricity. (For those who do, a generator is essential, as power fails constantly.) Nearly half the population is undernourished, rural sanitation facilities are rare, malaria accounts for more than a quarter of all childhood deaths, and easily preventable diarrheal diseases such as rotavirus are common.

Because the oil companies routinely pay most large expenses for their foreign workers in Angola, a dollar bill can quickly begin to feel like Monopoly money. Before I visited the Espinosas, I asked at my hotel if it could provide a car and driver for the ten-mile journey from the center of the city to the suburb of Talatona. The clerk at the front desk told me it would cost a hundred and fifty dollars. There weren’t many alternatives, so I agreed. Later, I saw him waving frantically at me in the lobby. He explained that he had been wrong about the taxi: it would actually cost four hundred and fifty dollars, each way. I found another ride.

The trip took two hours. It was a Friday afternoon, and the single rutted road that runs south toward Luanda Sul was jammed with commuters, trucks, tractors, and a stream of the unregulated Toyota minivans—candongueiros—that pass for public transportation. Children worked the roadway, selling soccer balls, popcorn, phone cards, toilet seats, and multicolored polyester brooms. I stopped at the Casa dos Frescos, a grocery store favored by expatriates, to buy some Scotch for my hosts, but a fifth of the Balvenie cost three hundred dollars, so I settled for a mediocre bottle of wine, for sixty-five. The woman in front of me, juggling an infant and a cell phone, unloaded her groceries on the checkout counter. She had a couple of steaks, a few pantry items, and two seventeen-dollar pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, along with juice and vegetables. The bill was eleven hundred and fifty dollars. She didn’t seem fazed, and I later learned that the store was famous for its prices. A few years ago, the Casa dos Frescos had been the site of what locals refer to as “the incident of the golden melon.’’ An enraged French customer, having paid a hundred and five dollars for a single melon, sued the store for profiteering. The case was thrown out of court, in part because the man not only bought the melon but also ate the evidence.

For dinner, Espinosa grilled steak and part of a thirty-five-pound tuna that he’d caught the previous week on the Kwanza River. When oil people leave Angola, he told me, they often sell their freezers, packed with American beef, to their successors. “People can charge ten thousand dollars for a well-stocked freezer,’’ he said. He mentioned that a friend once tried to sell him a roll of aluminum foil for a hundred and forty dollars. Espinosa grinned and rolled his eyes. “That crazy Randy,’’ he said. “In the end, I think I paid thirty dollars.’’

“T.I.A., man,’’ he said, shrugging his shoulders and using a favorite acronym: “This is Angola.”

Angola endured four centuries of servitude and slavery before gaining independence, in 1975, and Luanda was once the world’s busiest slave port. The National Museum of Slavery, about an hour from the city, is housed in a spare colonial structure that sits on a promontory overlooking the Kwanza River. There isn’t much to see—drawings of slaves crammed into steerage for the trip across the Atlantic, a display of shackles, and some brief historical notes—but the simplicity is powerful and disturbing. The building is the last place that slaves came before they were blessed by a priest, put on a boat, and shipped to the markets of Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and the Dominican Republic. Millions passed through the region, many of whom died before they reached their destination.

The Portuguese arrived in 1575, took control soon afterward, and remained in power until 1974, when a military coup finally toppled the government in Lisbon. Nationalists had been fighting in Angola for more than a decade, and when the colonists pulled out of the country the fleeing citizens took everything that could be moved. Ryszard Kapuscinski, in “Another Day of Life,’’ his memoir of that time, described the efforts to cram the entire city into a series of wooden crates and ship most of it to Lisbon. “I don’t know if there had ever been an instance of a whole city sailing across the ocean, but that is exactly what happened,’’ he wrote. “On the streets now there were only thousands of cars, rusting and covered with dust. The walls also remained, the roofs, the asphalt on the roads, and the iron benches along the boulevards.”

Angola has millions of acres of rich, arable land and an unusual abundance of mineral wealth, particularly diamonds. One Brazilian businessman told me that turning Angola into a farming nation and lowering its dependence on oil revenues should not be that difficult. “My country sells many thousands of tons of crops to China each year,” he said. “Angola is closer to China, and the countries have a strong relationship. The land is tremendously fertile. Why not grow those crops here and steal the Brazilian market?” With spectacular waterfalls, some of the world’s most elusive bird species, miles of untouched beaches, and what surfers regard as nearly perfect conditions, there are also promising opportunities for tourism.

But Angola lacks the infrastructure for any of those industries; the roads are so poor that the biggest farms often burn crops, because they cannot get them to market before they rot. Chevron began drilling during the nineteen-fifties; before independence, and even after oil became the nation’s most valuable commodity, exports of sisal, maize, coffee, and cotton as well as diamonds and iron ore contributed significantly to the country’s economy. That ended with the exodus of the Portuguese; few Angolans had been trained to manage factories or farms. Trade vanished, the communications systems fell apart, and the economy collapsed.

For the next twenty-five years, Angola fell into one of the most destructive civil wars in modern history. At least a million people died. By most estimates, roughly ten million land mines were buried—many of them remain active—scarring a territory twice the size of Texas and making large-scale agricultural planning nearly impossible. The war was fought as much for oil and diamonds as for ideological reasons, but it also served as the last major proxy battle of the Cold War. The United States, still struggling to accept the loss in Vietnam, refused to cede the territory to the Russians, who were equally committed to retaining a foothold in southern Africa. The UNITA rebels, backed by the C.I.A. and South African mercenaries, were led by Jonas Savimbi, a murderous despot who embraced Maoist principles. The Marxists—the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.)—with support from the Russians and led by Agostinho Neto, who later became the country’s first President, relied on an unusual mixture of Eastern European economic advisers and Cuban soldiers. Both sides often condemned the influence and the power of Western oil companies, but Neto understood that his regime and the country probably wouldn’t survive without them. He made sure that American oil companies were protected and, in turn, won financial backing from companies such as Chevron.

“It was a true witches’ cauldron,” one foreign official who spent years in Angola told me. The hostilities ended only in 2002, when assassins shot Savimbi in the head. (“The best use of bullets in the history of munitions,’’ another longtime resident of Luanda said.) President dos Santos, who is seventy-two, became the head of the M.P.L.A. in 1979, after Neto died. The Party still uses that acronym, although it officially abandoned Marxism more than twenty years ago.

After hundreds of years of strife, Angola has been a peaceful country for little more than a decade. No society forged in that kind of conflict can quickly find its footing. “I spent my first two years here hunting for water,’’ Nicholas Staines, who until recently served as local director of the International Monetary Fund, told me one afternoon, as we sat in the garden outside the I.M.F. office. “And I mean hunting. I would walk out of my house with a fistful of cash, and my wife would say, ‘Don’t come back till you find some water.’ So I would hunt for the nearest water truck and say, ‘Where are you going? How much is that person paying you? I will double it.’ That is how you got water in Angola just a few years ago.’’

Then, suddenly, there were hundreds of people with unimaginable wealth and few restraints. Tales of excess became commonplace, and often they are told with pride. One businessman famously distributed Rolexes to guests as party favors at a wedding. Each member of parliament recently received a new hundred-thousand-dollar Lexus. Isabel dos Santos, the President’s forty-two-year-old daughter, is typically described as the richest woman in Africa; Forbes puts her net worth at more than three billion dollars. She was educated in London, at King’s College, and owns the biggest building, with the most expensive apartments, in Luanda. In 2011, as president of the Red Cross, dos Santos paid Mariah Carey a million dollars to perform for two hours at the organization’s annual gala. The show was sponsored by Unitel, Angola’s principal mobile-phone company, which she also owns.

Dos Santos is one of the city’s most ambitious restaurateurs. One day, I had lunch at Oon.dah, on the first floor of the Escom Center, another of her properties; the house specialty, the Wagyu Beef Hamburger, sells for about sixty dollars, and a half pound of tenderloin goes for twice that. A bottle of Cristal champagne costs twelve hundred dollars. Displaying such wealth in a country as impoverished as Angola can be a challenge. One member of the President’s inner circle owns a Rolls-Royce, but there are few good roads in Luanda. So every Sunday he loads the car into a trailer, takes it to the Marginal—a recently renovated two-mile-long promenade along the South Atlantic—drives it for a while on the capital’s only smooth road, loads it back into its trailer, and has it hauled away.

Angola is widely regarded as one of the world’s most egregious kleptocracies. The bulk of the country’s wealth is controlled by a few hundred oligarchs—Presidential cronies, generals, and their families. “The default position of Angolan businessmen is above the law,’’ Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, an associate professor of politics at Oxford University, writes in “Magnificent and Beggar Land,’’ his comprehensive new account of Angola’s recent history. “Whether it is a matter of capital flight, money laundering, the unilateral abandonment of partnerships with foreigners, the non-payment of loans and import duties, conflict of interest between public and private roles . . . These are not occasional whims, but the very stuff of Angolan private sector life.’’

Last year, the nation ranked a hundred and sixty-first out of a hundred and seventy-five countries on Transparency International’s corruption scale and a hundred and eighty-first on the World Bank’s most recent Ease of Doing Business index. In one category, resolving bankruptcies, Angola came in last. Twice in a week, my driver was hustled for money by traffic cops. The officers were patient and polite, but they lingered in a way that made it clear that it would be wise to hand over a hundred kwanzas, the equivalent of about a dollar. One night, as I pulled into the parking lot of a popular restaurant, a man suddenly appeared at the door. “We pay him,’’ my companion said. “This way, we will probably get the car back when we leave.” We then paid another man to seat us in a nearly empty restaurant, and another to bring us a fifteen-dollar bottle of Evian. That was before we ever saw our waiter.

The next afternoon, I needed batteries for my tape recorder. The only store I could find that carried them charged sixteen dollars (and gave me a handwritten receipt). Then the salesman punched the official figure, six dollars, into the cash register; the extra ten dollars was for him. Angola has several dozen universities, more even than South Africa. But few have functioning libraries, and degrees are bought as often as they are earned. More than one person told me that in order to graduate from Agostinho Neto University, the largest academic institution in Angola, even some of the most talented students are forced to pay bribes. Antonio, an official of a major oil company who was educated at several of Luanda’s best international schools, said that he had entered the university but quickly dropped out. “It was a giant step backward,” he said. “A complete waste of my time.” (Few Angolans were willing to be identified by more than a first or middle name. The constitution protects freedom of speech and assembly, but the government has grown increasingly intolerant of criticism.)

Antonio is a thin, contemplative man with an oval face and a head of loose, springy curls. He and two of his friends, Pedro and Marisa, joined me one night for dinner at La Vigia, a popular restaurant where diners can select fish from a tank near the cash register. “It is really hard to find honest people here,’’ Pedro said. “Everywhere you go, even every small business, somebody is trying to cheat you.” Like Antonio, Pedro had graduated from premier schools, and, despite his comments, he expressed optimism about the country’s long-term future. Marisa, who attended college and business school in Europe, said that when she is stopped by the traffic police she simply refuses to pay—“and eventually they go away.’’ The three, all in their thirties, agreed that although they might prefer to live abroad, there has never been a better time to be a well-educated Angolan. The government requires foreign oil companies to hire local residents, and, for those who are qualified, the prospects for lucrative jobs are excellent.

“We can function effectively in a foreign environment,’’ Pedro said. “That makes us unusual.’’ His English, which he said he learned from watching American police shows on TV, was letter-perfect. He told me that he and his colleagues often see job applicants who, despite having graduated from the country’s best tech programs, “barely know how to turn on a computer.” The three friends stressed more than once that, owing to their education and relative prosperity, they were far from typical. Yet they represent the vibrant and promising new Angola that is struggling to emerge. None of them have known any leader other than dos Santos. International human-rights groups regularly denounce him, but his power remains absolute. “A lot of people see him as the King of Angola,’’ Pedro said. “He kind of owns the country. People almost can’t look him in the eyes—he’s that powerful.’’

Marisa added, “It’s like your father who is very mean to you. You go to dinner every day, and he shows up, and you smile and say, ‘Hi, Daddy.’ You say nothing instead of saying, ‘What have you done to me, you are horrible.’ ’’ Marisa, who is single, runs the procurement operation at an oil-services firm. Just that day, she had interviewed a twenty-five-year-old prospective employee who was the father of seven children. “That’s pretty normal,” she said. “Not necessarily seven kids, but having children by the time you’re in your early twenties.” Marisa lives in the center of town and commutes through heavy traffic to an office on the outskirts of the city. She rises at five, a driver arrives by six, and she is at the office shortly after seven. “There is tremendous pressure to have at least one child before you hit thirty,’’ she said. “But things are changing.’’ She said that she recently heard a woman explain on a radio show why lesbians exist: they weren’t loved by men, and therefore looked to their mothers—or perhaps a sister or a cousin—for a model of what love should look like.

“The same principle applied to homosexuals or violent people,’’ Marisa said. “You become violent because your parents are violent—that is the view. You become a lesbian because you didn’t have a father figure. This is ridiculous and offensive. But it’s also a great step forward, because we are speaking in broad daylight, on the radio, about lesbians and homosexuals. They are not accepted, but they are not going to be killed. This is an advance.”

Luanda aspires to become the Dubai of Africa, but it has a long way to go. In 1975, the city had half a million residents; today there are almost six million. Hotels, luxury apartment buildings, shopping arcades, and modern office complexes compete for space in the city center with shantytowns made from corrugated tin and heavy cardboard and with tens of thousands of people who live on mounds of dirt, in the scrapped remains of rusted and abandoned vehicles, or out in the open, next to fetid, unused water tanks. To make room for development, President dos Santos has cleared many slums in the past decade, usually without warning or compensation. He has promised to provide displaced occupants with housing farther away from the city center, but the government has struggled with the furious pace of population growth.

Construction cranes are visible everywhere. (It pays to look up as you walk the streets: there are no scaffoldings to protect pedestrians from falling debris, and workmen occasionally toss empty water bottles from the skyscrapers.) The city often smells of sewage and stagnant water, but it has grand ambitions. After almost a decade of delays, the nearly completed Intercontinental Hotel and Casino, a ziggurat of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete, hovers over the harbor. An eight-lane highway—Luanda’s first genuinely modern road—runs along the city’s horseshoe-shaped port. Between the highway and the water, pedestrians amble along the Marginal, enjoying spectacular sunset views. Across the bay, connected to the city by a causeway, ostentatious night clubs with names like Chill Out and Miami Beach line the shores of the neighborhood known as the Ilha, which for many years was an abandoned strip of sand used mainly by local fishermen.

Most expatriates leave Luanda after a few years, but some choose to stay. One afternoon, I visited Tako Koning, a Canadian petroleum geologist, who lives on the seventh floor of an older building in the center of Luanda with his wife, Henriette, an energetic and engaging English teacher. Koning is sixty-five, with a thick mustache, heavy-lidded blue eyes, and slightly shaggy hair. He worked for Texaco for thirty years, first in Canada and then in Indonesia and Nigeria; in 1995, he and Henriette moved to Luanda. Koning retired from Texaco when it merged with Chevron, in 2001, and now works as a consultant. The couple’s apartment is comfortable but not luxurious. (Because power failures are so common, Henriette refuses to enter the elevator, preferring to climb the seven flights. “I don’t do African elevators,’’ she told me.) The rent—six thousand dollars a month—is reasonable for a place in the center of the city with excellent views.

From their terrace, the city looks like an archeological cutaway. Henriette pointed to a building across the street. “You can see they are not well off, because during power outages the building is dark,” she said—meaning that they lacked a backup generator. In another nearby building, occupied by diplomats and oil executives, a three-bedroom apartment rents for as much as twenty thousand dollars a month. I could see the new BP headquarters, a twenty-five-story building called Torres do Carmo, and the massive glass headquarters of Sonangol, the state oil company. “That’s the French Embassy,” Henriette said, pointing to a stolid town house. “And now look straight down.” Below us, rows of tin roofs were wedged tightly between apartment buildings. “They were displaced during the civil war,” she said. “Now they live on the street right next to the diplomats and millionaires.”

The Konings often entertain young Angolans, including the three I had recently met. The couple has supported students, and Tako, who was born in the Netherlands but lived mostly in Canada, contributes his time to a variety of schools and engineering societies. “You quickly realize that you can make a bigger difference here than in a place like Toronto,’’ he said. “It can be very satisfying.’’ I asked what he thought of expatriates who seemed to avoid interacting with Angolans. He shrugged. “The thing about Americans that I always loved is that you jumped in and got things done,’’ he said. “You rolled into Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan. The countries were destroyed, but you put them back together. I understand that the U.S. wanted to hold off the Russians—there are always geopolitical reasons. But what matters is what you did.”

In Angola, he added, “you can’t simply hit a switch and say everything is normal just because the war has ended and the country has oil.” China essentially provided its own Marshall Plan: as the world’s biggest oil consumer, it buys nearly two million barrels a day from Angola, more than from any other country, and Chinese firms are building schools, roads, bridges, ports, and one of the largest housing developments in Africa, in nearby Kilamba. The buildings, designed for middle-income residents, are still mostly unoccupied, but they take up thousands of acres—pastel high-rises, just a few miles beyond the city limits, that look like a sub-Saharan Co-op City.

“We never planned to stay here forever,’’ Koning said. “We have two children and a grandchild in Toronto. But the longer you stay the deeper your roots go down. And we know people.’’ I went to a local place for a beer with him one night. Many of the street people waved, and several approached, eagerly but pleasantly. Koning says he doesn’t think it makes sense to hand out money, but he pays a man to watch his car, more as charity than for security. When people need medicine and clothing, he and Henriette often chip in.

The political landscape is troubling, though. In Luanda, security forces regularly stop protests and arrest those who try to attend them. In 2012, two activists disappeared after an anti-government protest. For more than a year, Angolan officials denied any knowledge of their fate. Late in 2013, after sustained protests by human-rights workers, the attorney general admitted that the two men had been kidnapped and probably murdered. Residents of Luanda are understandably afraid to test their freedom. When Koning and I got to the bar, we were joined at a table in the garden by a Russian diamond dealer. “We produce more diamonds than anyone else on earth, my dear,’’ he said in a very slight Russian accent. “But keep it to yourself.” There was also a dance teacher, a couple of other journalists, and an American woman who did not give her name or discuss her profession. The weather was dry and clear, and at night the air became softer, more fragrant and inviting. The others were relaxed, but the woman, who I later learned worked for an international N.G.O., looked anxious. “You can’t write about me,’’ she said, when I told her that I was a journalist. “It’s not safe. I will get death threats.’’ After a few moments of awkward silence, she stood up, said she couldn’t trust me, and walked out.

Foreign embassies routinely warn their citizens about crime in the capital. “Avoid walking around Luanda, especially after dark,’’ the British Foreign Office advises. One should also avoid “wearing jewelry or watches in public places” and “walking between bars and restaurants on the Ilha do Cabo,” as well as “crowded places like markets.’’ The U.S. State Department is even more blunt: “The capital city, Luanda, continues to maintain a well deserved reputation as a haven for armed robberies, assaults, carjackings, and overall crimes of opportunity. However, reliable statistical crime data is unavailable in Angola.’’ Many foreign workers are forbidden by their employers to drive cars there; those who want to spend a weekend in the countryside need to get permission well in advance. One afternoon, about an hour before I planned to meet some people near my hotel, one of them called. “What time should we pick you up?’’ she asked. I told her that I would walk the five hundred yards to our meeting spot. She tried to dissuade me, but when I insisted she urged me to lock my bag, passport, and wallet in the safe in my hotel room. “Bring a Xerox of the passport page and some money,’’ she said. “And do not show your phone on the street.” I made it to the meeting and back without incident.

Most expatriates said that their concern about crime was the main reason they avoided the city. At times, though, the fears seemed exaggerated. Not long after I arrived, I had dinner in the suburbs with a French journalist and some Americans. My colleague told one of the guests that she lived in the center of Luanda, a block or so from the Skyna Hotel, which is on the Avenue de Portugal, the city’s version of Fifth Avenue. The Skyna is enormous, extremely well known, and readily picked out of the skyline. “Where is that?” the guest, who had lived in Angola for more than a year, asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Americans can earn twice their usual salary in Angola, but there are few easily accessible cultural institutions or opportunities for entertainment. There’s the Slavery Museum and the Portuguese fortress of São Miguel, which overlooks the port, but in Luanda there’s not a single commercial movie theatre. “It’s all Netflix here,” Steve Espinosa told me. “If your Internet connection is good enough—otherwise you are out of luck.” There are more significant challenges. Exxon-Mobil, among other companies, carries out random urine tests on its workers, and those who fail are sent home. The company isn’t really looking for drugs such as cocaine, heroin, or marijuana; rather, it wants to make sure that employees are taking their malaria medicine. (The concern is understandable, but long-term use of malaria preventives can cause serious liver damage.)

Foreigners typically stay for two or three years; the Espinosas have been there for six. Two of their children attended the Luanda International School, which is only a couple of miles from where they live. The campus is beautiful and modern, with computer systems and well-kept playing fields. The staff is made up largely of foreign teachers, who tend to move every few years among the world’s élite international schools. Fees, which are almost always paid by oil companies, come to about fifty thousand dollars a year. Some companies even pay when they don’t have a student who needs the seat. “If Chevron or BP wants to transfer somebody in the middle of a year,’’ one teacher said, “these companies have to be certain that children can attend a good school.”

Students are typically driven to school, waved through a security gate, collected after class, and then driven back to the safety of their housing cluster. Nobody takes a bus, rides a bike, or walks. There are also many local students at the international school—mostly children of Angola’s élite, which can be a problem in civics classes, given the government’s deplorable human-rights record. A few weeks earlier, the mother of an important minister spoke at the school. “It’s hard for people like that to admit the truth about issues like free speech and hard for us to ignore it,” one teacher told me. “So we try to walk a line.” (One report, released in March by the International Federation for Human Rights, which represents more than a hundred and seventy human-rights groups throughout the world, found that journalists and human-rights workers in Angola are subject to “judicial and administrative harassment, acts of intimidation, threats and other forms of restrictions to their freedom of association and expression.”)

For those who prefer the protected life, the cocoon can extend all the way to Houston. The Houston Express, operated by Atlas Air, flies three times a week between George Bush International Airport and Luanda’s Quatro de Fevereiro Airport. Tickets are usually available only through the oil companies. Most seats, which sell for about ten thousand dollars, are in business class. People who fly on a commercial airliner from the U.S. typically change planes in Paris or London. On my flight, there were about two hundred and seventy-five passengers, all but a few of them men. It felt like a military transport.

Nobody is sure how long Angola’s expat exceptionalism can last. The plummeting price of oil has already forced Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and Schlumberger to cut thousands of jobs throughout the world. So far, Angola has mostly been spared. (No official from any oil company would agree to talk to me about its presence in Angola.) But if the United States stops buying Angola’s oil, and if China’s rate of economic growth continues to slow, major foreign companies would be unable to sustain their current staffing levels and expenditures.

Oil revenue accounts for more than ninety per cent of Angola’s foreign-exchange earnings, and there are many risks for a country that relies too heavily on one commodity. Economists call it the resource curse. For years, oil experts predicted that by 2020 Nigeria and Angola would account for twenty-five per cent of America’s crude imports; the shale revolution in Texas and North Dakota put an end to such speculation. Within a few years, the United States might not need any Angolan oil. The current price of a barrel of oil is about fifty dollars, but just a few months ago the Angolan government, for the purposes of its 2015 budget, assumed that the average price would be eighty-one dollars. That gap will prove hard to close. The dos Santos government announced earlier this year that it would cut the budget by a quarter, and it has said that it will work harder to diversify the economy. Few economists who study Africa believe that it will be easy.

“They say that they will diversify the economy all the time,’’ Gustavo Costa, the Luanda correspondent for the Portuguese newspaper Expresso, told me. “There has always been that opportunity. And in theory, at least, it’s still there. But the government has built a certain kind of society—for themselves. You can call it prosperity if you want, but it is incredibly fragile. It all could end tomorrow.”

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Developing World

Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012

(mehr)

16.12.2014
Developing World

Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012

(mehr)

01.12.2014
Nigeria

Zwölf Milliarden Dollar verschwunden

(mehr)

01.10.2014
Centrafrique

Samba-Panza, dos Santos et les 10 millions de dollars

(mehr)

12.03.2014
Zimbabwe

$16 million for Mugabe family

(mehr)

07.02.2014
Mali

Des indemnités et primes astronomiques pour les députés

(mehr)

31.01.2014
Tanzania

Tanzanian shock at MPs' $98,000 pay-off

(mehr)

24.01.2014
Niger

Disparition de 600 millions d'euros

(mehr)

22.11.2013
South Africa

Jacob Zuma's Nkandla home: South African papers defy photo ban

(mehr)

11.11.2013
Afrika

Korruption in Afrika

(mehr)

03.10.2013
Kongo

Eine Milliarde Euro an europäischen Steuergeldern im Kongo versickert

(mehr)

17.09.2013
Liberia

Liberian president's son quits as head of state oil firm

(mehr)

15.09.2013
Senegal

Karim Wade doit justifier de l'origine de 150 millions d'euros supplémentaires


(mehr)

08.07.2013
Africa

Global Witness's Charmian Gooch at TED Global 2013

(mehr)

14.06.2013
Afrika

Grosse illegale Geldabflüsse

(mehr)

02.06.2013
Libya

Libya asks South Africa to help recover Gaddafi riches

(mehr)

19.05.2013
Niger

La fille d’un dignitaire nigérien interpellée en France avec un milliard de francs CFA

(mehr)

19.05.2013
Afrika

Afrika, Kontinent der Steuerschlupflöcher

(mehr)

01.05.2013
Kenya

New Kenyan lawmakers vote themselves free luxury car perk, worth $60,000

(mehr)

15.04.2013
Senegal

Karim Wade arrested

(mehr)

01.03.2013
Angola

Isabel dos Santos, Angola`s First Billionaire

(mehr)

26.02.2013
NIger

21 fonctionnaires écroués pour détournement de fonds


(mehr)

08.02.2013
Afrika

Wundersame Geldvermehrung

(mehr)

21.12.2012
Uganda

Entwicklungshilfe: Wenn die EU Korruptionshilfe betreibt...


(mehr)

08.12.2012
Afrika

Von den 30 korruptesten Staaten der Welt liegt die Hälfte in Afrika.

(mehr)

28.11.2012
Uganda

‘Give our dollars back, you bad, bad hyena!’ (Opinion)

(mehr)

11.11.2012
Uganda

Nine Corruption Scandals to Look Back At

(mehr)

08.10.2012
Mali

Université de Bamako : Corruption à ciel ouvert

(mehr)

02.10.2012
Südafrika

18,7 Mio. Euro Steuergelder für Zumas Privatdomizil

(mehr)

28.09.2012
Afrika

Afrikas 200 versteckte Milliardäre

(mehr)

01.09.2012
Angola

Auf Öl gebaut

(mehr)

13.07.2012
Guinée équatoriale

Biens mal acquis : mandat d'arrêt contre le fils du président de Guinée équatoriale

(mehr)

15.05.2012
Côte d'Ivoire

Plus de 700 millions FCFA sur un compte bancaire de Laurent Gbagbo


(mehr)

11.05.2012
Niger

Présidents détournent le budget

(mehr)

02.05.2012
Cameroun

Les baskets Sawa font l'audacieux pari du « made in Africa »

(mehr)

29.03.2012
Libye

L'Italie saisit pour 1,1 milliard d'euros de biens de la famille Kadhafi


(mehr)

02.03.2012
Gabon, Rép. du Congo

Comment Sassou-Nguesso et Bongo se seraient enrichis

(mehr)

28.02.2012
NIgeria

James Ibori: How a thief almost became Nigeria's president

(mehr)

10.02.2012
Cameroun

Les détournements de fonds publics, au moins 2,8 milliards d'euros


(mehr)

23.01.2012
Tchad

12 MILLIARDS DE FRANCS CFA POUR LE MARIAGE DU PRÉSIDENT DÉBY

(mehr)

29.12.2011
Niger

DECLARATION DES BIENS DES MEMBRES DU GOUVERNEMENT:
OMAR HAMIDOU TCHANA, MINISTRE D'ETAT, MINISTRE DES MINES ET DU DEVELOPPEMENT INDUSTRIEL


(mehr)

02.11.2011
Äquatorialguinea

Kein Bugatti für Afrika

(mehr)

13.09.2011
France

Chirac, Villepin et Le Pen accusés de financements occultes

(mehr)

28.07.2011
Uganda

"Entwicklungshilfe": Russische Kampfjets für Uganda

(mehr)

09.06.2011
France

Biens mal acquis

(mehr)

09.06.2011
France

Biens mal acquis

(mehr)

04.05.2011
Afrika

Potentatengelder

(mehr)

01.05.2011
Afrika

Niebel stellt Promi-Fonds Ultimatum

(mehr)

11.03.2011
Afrika

Die Milliarden der Diktatoren

(mehr)

07.03.2011
Afrika

Vom Reichtum auf dem Kontinent des Hungers

(mehr)

28.02.2011
Äquatorialguinea

Äquatorialguineas Herrscher lieben den Luxus.

(mehr)

22.02.2011
Guinea

Guinea bankrupted by junta - President Alpha Conde

(mehr)

10.02.2011
Kamerun

Milliarden Euro an Staatsgeldern veruntreut

(mehr)

08.02.2011
Nigeria

Riches Flow Into Nigeria, but Are Lost After Arrival

(mehr)

01.02.2011
Ägypten

Familie Mubarak hat vorgesorgt

(mehr)

24.01.2011
Afrika

Global Fund statement on abuse of funds in some countries

(mehr)

03.01.2011
Elfenbeinküste

Gbagbos schwarze Kassen

(mehr)

30.12.2010
Afrika

Afrikas Despoten können's nicht lassen

(mehr)

29.12.2010
Gabon

Selon WikiLeaks, Omar Bongo aurait détourné des fonds au profit de partis français

(mehr)

21.12.2010
Britannien

Diktatoren bevorzugen London


(mehr)

20.12.2010
Kenya

2,500 to be sacked in Kenyan ministry employment scandal

(mehr)

19.12.2010
Kenya

Graft in education

(mehr)

10.11.2010


Biens mal acquis

(mehr)

06.09.2010
Mali

Important détournement de fonds au ministère de la Santé

(mehr)

08.06.2010
Africa

World Bank and Switzerland Call for Action Against Asset Theft and Corruption

(mehr)

08.06.2010
Africa

About 16.2 billion - 32.4 Euros stolen every year through bribery etc.

(mehr)

03.06.2010
Sénégal

Le Sénégal gaspille toujours

(mehr)

14.05.2010
Liberia

A second term for Sirleaf

(mehr)

12.05.2010
Tanzania

Kikwete's foreign trips gobble billions

(mehr)

25.02.2010
Sénégal

An outsize statue symbolises the defects of the president and his family

(mehr)

10.12.2009
Africa

African Leaders are saboteurs and enemies of progress

(mehr)

03.12.2009
Sénégal

Wade achète un terrain à 14 milliards à New York


(mehr)

29.10.2009
Swasiland etc.

Afrikas gierige Herrscher


(mehr)

27.10.2009
Senegal

Senegal admits IMF 'money gift'

(mehr)

31.08.2009
Sambia

Schwedische Zweifel am Sinn von Entwicklungshilfe

(mehr)

24.08.2009
Zambia

Swedish Minister opens debate on corruption in Zambia

(mehr)

13.02.2009
Afrique

biens mal acquis

(mehr)

09.01.2009
Afrique

biens mal acquis

(mehr)

02.12.2008
Afrique

Biens mal acquis

(mehr)

29.11.2008
Sénégal

Pour rentrer de Paris jeudi et vendredi : Wade loue un avion, Sangomar ramène Viviane

(mehr)

06.08.2008
Swasiland

In Swasiland warten viele nur noch auf den Tod

(mehr)

17.05.2008
Kenia

94 Minister

(mehr)

01.02.2008
Afrique

Avenue Foch, j'achète !

(mehr)

04.10.2007
Niger

Veruntreuung im Heks-Programm in Niger

(mehr)

05.03.2007
Gambia

AIDS - Idiotensichere Methode


(mehr)

26.06.2006
Congo

$81,000 bill at a New York hotel

(mehr)

04.08.2002
Nigeria

Nigeria Retrieves Part of Stolen Billions

(mehr)

04.08.2002
Angola

$2bn in oil cash as Angola starves

(mehr)