Nothing dodgy here guys, just another day in Angola...
Please read all of the other articles you can find and gauge your own opinion, I think it is naive to think that the sale value is a fair value...
Mandurah, spend a few hours reading the surrounding aspects and then the 'surprise' sale announcement and let me know your thoughts
Google Cobalt Angola Corruption SEC and other words to pull out rafts of articles.
COBALT and the Privatization of State Power
Cobalt International Energy was established a decade ago with the financial backing of two giant American corporations: Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group. Their primary target was Angola and the CEO, Joseph Bryant, had previously headed British Petroleum's operations in Angola for six years where he established excellent relations with Manuel Vicente, when he was the CEO of Sonangol.
The standard Sonangol practice for new concessions is to hold an open round of bidding that is available to all interested companies. The winner of the new exploration block must also pay what is euphemistically called a "signature bonus" - i.e. thank you for letting me sign and with it I give you the amount demanded. These signature bonuses can be enormous; for example the signature bonuses for blocs 31 - 33 were $300 million each.
It is with this background that eyebrows were raised when in 2008 Cobalt appeared on the scene. They were awarded three exploration blocs (9, 20, & 21) without an open biding competition and they paid no signature bonuses. Instead, the Government and Sonangol insisted that Cobalt take on (i.e. "carry") two shell Angolan companies --Nazaki Oil & Gas and Alper Petroleum as non-paying partners, ostensibly to give Angolans more experience in the petroleum sector. Cobalt agreed to these prearranged conditions.
Later, under investigation for potential bribes by the US Security & Exchange Commission (SEC), the Colbalt CEO, Joseph Bryant, claimed that at the time these arrangements were made "the Government" demanded that they take on these two Angolan partners. Bryant insisted that he had no idea who comprised these two companies. If the SEC would have probed deeper, they would have discovered that Bryant had excellent relations with Vicente and there is no way that Bryant would not have known that Vicente owned 1/3 of Nazaki Oil & Gas -- according to Maka Angola, at one time they once even shared the same office.
The answer to the question why there was no competitive bidding or signature bonus was crystal clear when it was revealed that the Vicente's two partners in Nazaki Oil & Gas were none other than General Kopelipa, and General Dino Nascimento. The only person missing from the troika is the President himself. Vicente, who headed Sonangol for a dozen years, knew the petroleum industry in Angola as well if not better than any Angolan. He certainly did not need to be included as part of Nazaki to "gain more experience in the petroleum sector" which was "the Government's rational for including the two Angolan companies with a free ride!
Once the three partners in Nazaki were revealed to the public, things looked bad for Cobalt and Bryant. On August 4, 2014, Cobalt received notice from the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that a preliminary determination was to recommend that the SEC to institute an enforcement action against the Company, alleging violations of certain federal securities laws under the Federal Corrupt Practices Act - for bribing members of a foreign government.
Bryant and Cobalt hoped that this problem would go away when they announced that the three Nazaki partners (Kopelipa, Vicente, and Nascimento) sold their shares back to Sonangol for an alleged $50 to $100 million each for the three partners. This must be one of the clearest cases of bribing members of a foreign government that has ever come before the SEC's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
One obvious conclusion here is that the MPLA is going to have a nearly impossible task in 2017 to convince Angolan voters that they can be trusted not to steal even more of the people's money thereby exacerbating the plight of the Angolan people.
(20min delay)