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General 'Dino' sells 10 percent of Puma Energy to Trafigura

The raw materials intermediary Trafigura is in negotiations with the fuel distributor Puma Energy to buy 10 percent of General Leopoldino 'Dino' Fragoso do Nascimento's stake, which would take 5 percent of the company.

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According to the Financial Times, Trafigura, one of the main traders in raw materials, namely oil, is negotiating a complex financial restructuring agreement, which will see Cochan, an investment vehicle founded by General 'Dino', reduce its stake in Puma, which is 28 percent owned by Sonangol, from 15 percent to less than 5 percent.

Trafigura, which already owns 49 per cent of Puma, would then sell the shares it buys from Cochan again to Puma, thus managing to keep its shareholding below 49 per cent and avoiding consolidating Puma in its accounts.

Puma's debt at the end of September was 1.68 billion dollars, and this operation could help the fuel distributor to broaden its investor base, according to Trafigura's strategy, which puts the company's value at almost 3.6 billion dollars.

General 'Dino' is presented by FT as a "former adviser to former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos," and the news states that "the talks on Puma come at a time when Isabel dos Santos has been accused in Angola of money laundering," adding that the businesswoman "has repeatedly denied all accusations".

Trafigura has an old connection to the country, where it has had a near-monopoly on fuel imports through the DTS Group, together with General 'Dino's' Cochan, and where it won the tender to supply diesel to the Navy in May last year.

In November last year, Trafigura's involvement in the brazilian Lava-Jato scandal was also known, when the brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office searched Vitol and Trafigura in Switzerland for evidence of suspected payments to Petrobras employees in exchange for obtaining contracts.

A few months after coming to power, President João Lourenço ordered the launch of a tender for fuel imports, since Angola, despite being the second largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, has very limited refining capacity, forcing the import of almost all the fuel it consumes.

In January 2018, Sonangol announced the opening of the tender, which in practice ended Trafigura's monopoly, until then the biggest seller of refined oil to Angola and which controls 49 percent of Puma Energy, the owner of Angola's Pumangol brand fuel pumps.

According to a report by the Swiss non-governmental organisation (NGO) Public Eye, Trafigura is a holding company in which oil represents 67 per cent of profit in 2015, with physical assets of almost 40 billion dollars, "including mines, ships, storage tanks, petrol pumps and pipelines".

General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, known as 'Dino', was the former head of presidential telecommunications between 1995 and 2010, and was also Minister of State and head of the Security House during the reign of José Eduardo dos Santos.

'Dino' was part of the so-called triumvirate that gravitated around the family of José Eduardo dos Santos, together with General Hélder Vieira Dias Júnior ('Kopelipa') and former Vice President Manuel Vicente.

Among the main business holdings known to General 'Dino' are also Banco Económico, which resulted from the bankruptcy of Banco Espírito Santo Angola and the Luso-Angolan media group Newshold, in addition to the 15 per cent stake in Puma Energy.

At the end of last year, the portuguese judicial police intercepted a transfer of 10 million euros from 'Dino's' account at Millenium BCP on the way to Russia, believing that the recipient was Isabel dos Santos, which the general denies.

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