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Offshore Leaks Database

Data from
Panama Papers - The Power Players
Angolas minister of petroleum

José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos

Offshore use goes back to his first time as minister of petroleum

Related to

Angola

About

José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos has served as Angola’s Minister of Petroleum since 2008. An engineer by training, Botelho de Vasconcelos worked for years with Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol. Botelho de Vasconcelos first served as petroleum minister from 1999 to 2002 before becoming Minister for Energy and Water. He was re-appointed Minister of Petroleum in 2008 and was president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2009.

In the data

On 6 March 2002, when Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos was minister of petroleum for the first time, he was named one of two individuals who had power of attorney for Medea Investments Limited, a company that put its own value at $1 million. The company was incorporated on September 13, 2001 in Niue and moved to Samoa in 2006. It was inactivated on Feb. 16, 2009. In both Niue and Samoa, the company was held by “bearer” shares, which belong to the individual who physically holds them, making it easier to obscure ownership. Medea Investments Limited (Samoa) was one of two companies to hold shares in the New York company Blue Nile Consulting LLC in October 2007.

Response

Botelho de Vasconcelos did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
This visualization contains relevant information in relation to the profiled individual. Some additional connections might show up once we release the full structured data connected to the Paradise Papers investigation in the coming weeks.

Disclaimer

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. The inclusion of a person or entity in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database is not intended to suggest or imply that they have engaged in illegal or improper conduct. Many people and entities have the same or similar names. We suggest you confirm the identities of any individuals or entities included in the database based on addresses or other identifiable information. The data comes directly from the leaked files ICIJ has received in connection with various investigations and each dataset encompasses a defined time period specified in the database. Some information may have changed over time. Please contact us if you find an error in the database.

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. Read more