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Angola: Government misplaces $32 billion
The IMF and Human Rights Watch challenge the government to explain the missing money.
A giant portrait of Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos is seen in the center of Luanda on January 30, 2010. The Angolan capital is undergoing since 2002 a massive reconstruction following 27 years of civil war.
Issouf Sanogo
NAIROBI, Kenya — You know how it is. End of year accounts, some of the figures don't add up, they're a few dollars out. That's a discrepancy. A few dollars. But $32 billion?
In December, Human Rights Watch challenged the Angola government to explain what had happened to $32 billion worth of government funds linked to the state oil company Sonangol, which the International Monetary Fund said it could not find (PDF).
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Now the state news agency has reported that the missing money isn't really missing, it's just that there is a lack of paperwork explaining where it went. So that's alright, then. This explanation will doubtless satisfy the two-thirds of the population who live on less than $2 a day in the shadow of the wealth of Angola's rich-as-Croesus elites.
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