Editor’s Note
This article is based on an investigation by the magazine “Visão,” which cites detailed testimony provided to Portuguese authorities. It reports on alleged networks involved in the illegal trafficking of precious stones and mentions several figures from Angola’s former political leadership.
Several “secrets” about the illegal trafficking of precious stones have been exposed by the magazine “Visão” in a lengthy investigation based on detailed testimony already provided to Portuguese justice. The report notably features several figures from the former Angolan regime, including the daughter of ex-president Isabel dos Santos, currently in exile in Dubai.
As one might read in a detective novel, Jorge Francisco, alias Jorge Americano, has come clean. In 2016, this trafficker, a native of the Azores who grew rich from the illegal precious stones trade in Angola, recounted the inner workings of this global network to Portuguese justice. He is this week the privileged witness for the investigation published by Visão on the subject.
At 77, Jorge Americano, who now lives in Brazil, is still under formal investigation in Lisbon for a €4 million tax fraud linked to this trafficking.
And for good reason: despite the wealth of details (routes, names, and amounts involved) he provided to Carlos Alexandre, a renowned Portuguese judge in charge of the investigation, the latter did not gather sufficient evidence to prosecute him for smuggling.
Based on the “revelations” of the man who, according to the investigation, now owns “18 urban buildings and five others in the countryside, as well as an animal feed factory in the Azores, and who moves millions of euros through his accounts,” the magazine details the evolution and international ramifications of this business in Angola, “based on word and trust.” The report notably features figures from the clan of José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017.
Jorge Americano, protected by a friend of the former president’s son, began buying diamonds in the late 1990s and moving them until their entry into Europe, specifically Portugal and Belgium. At a time when Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president and future “richest woman in Africa,” owned part of the Ascorp company, created with the blessing and participation of the Angolan state through Trans Africa Investment Services, or Tais Ltd, an offshore company founded with her mother, Tatiana Kukanova.
A privileged position, comments Visão:
Before the “Operation ‘Transparency’,” launched in 2018 by the successor of José Eduardo dos Santos, current President João Lourenço,
reports to the magazine M’Zée Fula Ngenge, the president of the African Diamond Council, who seeks to bring ethics to the international stone trade.
He describes the informal circuits established from Angola, the fourth largest African diamond producer (behind South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Botswana):
