Despite its forthcoming corruption trial, Trafigura continues with its business operations in Angola

Zurich, Lausanne, 26. November 2024

Although an historic trial is brought against Trafigura for alleged corruption in Angola between 2009 and 2011, opening on 2nd December, the Geneva-based trading house has re-established itself in the country under the pretext of supporting the energy transition. Since this summer, it is operating the Lobito Corridor, a strategic railway line running to central Africa’s copper and cobalt mines, sponsored by the Biden administration to counter Beijing’s stranglehold on these strategic resources. A Public Eye journalist boarded a train crossing this corridor to discover what is at stake as Trafigura casts its shadow over this country. The investigation also reveals how, back in the early 2010s, it had invested tens of millions of dollars to try to obtain the concession for this line, using its historical networks and key intermediaries from the Dos Santos era.

Disappointed by China, whose contracts have stifled public finances, Angola awarded in 2022 the concession for the Lobito Corridor line to the “European” consortium Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR), led by Trafigura. In October 2024, Public Eye tracked down the Angolan connection in order to understand how the trading house managed – despite all the legal setbacks it’s facing – to get its hands on this strategic project supported by the United States with hundreds of millions of dollars. The objective behind operating these 1,700 kilometres of railway is to divert the minerals being extracted from the Central African Copperbelt away from their eastern routes towards Lobito, an Atlantic port facing the Western world.

From 2010 onwards, Trafigura relied on its historical networks and key intermediaries from the Dos Santos era to gain an initial foothold in the Lobito Corridor, a long-held ambition of its co-founder Claude Dauphin, who died in 2015. Its first investment, made in September 2010, was for an amount totalling more than $87.5 million and made through an opaque entity, AngoFret Ltda, administered by Mariano Marcondes Ferraz, a former Trafigura executive nicknamed “Mr Angola”. Convicted first in 2018 in Brazil and then in 2019 in Switzerland for paying bribes to Brazil’s state-owned company Petrobras, it is his confession that has led to the trading house – and three individuals – ending up in the dock before the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona for alleged corrupt practices involving the Angolan oil market.

AngoFret Ltda was owned by DT Group, a joint venture set up between General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, nicknamed “Dino” (now under U.S. Treasury sanctions), and Trafigura. DT Group, which had Ferraz acting as operational director at that time, was at the heart of Trafigura’s set-up in Angol a during the Dos Santos era. Dino’s cousin was also one of the early investors alongside Trafigura. Not to mention that the lawyer who had handled all the companies’ domicile arrangements is the great-niece of another politically exposed person: General Kopelipa, who is also currently under sanctions. At the time, she had an e-mail address hosted by Trafigura. She also set up the Angolan subsidiary of the Belgian railway operator Vecturis, a partner of Trafigura in the LAR consortium. The co-founder of Vecturis maintains he is not aware of the existence of this entity.

More information here or from:

Adrià Budry Carbó, Commodities Researcher (present in Bellinzone for the trial), +41 78 738 64 48, adria.budrycarbo@publiceye.ch

Oliver Classen, Media Director, +41 44 277 79 06, oliver.classen@publiceye.ch

Photos are available for media use.