Angola's Joao Lourenco sacks armed forces, spy bosses in latest purge

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Angola President, Joao Lourenco at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., May 17, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr)

Angola President, Joao Lourenco at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., May 17, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr)

President Joao Lourenco of Angola on Monday sacked the chief of staff of the armed forces and the head of the foreign intelligence agency, his latest moves against officials tainted by graft allegations or links to his predecessor, Jose-Eduardo Dos-Santos.

Lourenco succeeded Dos-Santos last September, pledging to tackle an endemic culture of corruption and bring economic reforms to Angola, Africa’s second biggest producer of crude oil, which is marred by widespread poverty in spite its oil wealth.

Gen. Geraldo Nunda, the Head of the Armed Forces before his sacking, was named by prosecutors in March as a suspect in an investigation of a scheme to negotiate a fraudulent international credit line of 50 billion dollars.

André de Oliveira-Sango, a long-time Dos-Santos loyalist, was made foreign intelligence chief over a decade ago.

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Their sackings were announced in a presidential decree broadcast on the national public radio station.

Neither could be reached for comment.

José Filomeno Dos-Santos, the son of Angola’s ex-president, was charged in March with fraud relating to a 500 million dollars transaction out of an account belonging to the central bank, a clear sign that the former first family has lost its grip on power.

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