Trafigura’s business in Angola

The Geneva and Lucerne-based company has allied itself with General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, also known as “Dino”. General Dino is a special adviser to the Chief of the Military at the Office of the Angolan Presidency and Director of Cochan Pte in Singapore, a 100% subsidiary of Cochan (Bahamas), which entered into a Joint Venture with Trafigura in 2009. The deal gave rise to DTS Holding (Singapore) with Dino as one director and the now deceased Trafigura President Claude Dauphin as the other. Officially, DTS Holdings is a logistics and infrastructure provider but in reality its main business is oil. The Joint Venture benefits from a remarkable contract: it exports (unknown amounts) of Angolan crude and in exchange, from 2009 to 2016, was exclusive provider of petroleum products to the domestic market.

Due to the lack of transparency and regulatory measures, Switzerland is a safe haven for companies that are enriching themselves and autocratic rulers off the backs of poor populations. There are ways of preventing this – hence why we call for payment transparency or a commodity supervisory authority such as ROHMA.