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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CommanderCricket who wrote (164302)	2/22/2012 8:20:45 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206327

in March last year, the US Securities Exchange Commission, which regulates the securities industry, said it had been in contact with Cobalt regarding the allegations about Nazaki’s ownership and the conflict of interest. It said the US company told it Nazaki had denied verbally and in writing that it had connections with senior government figures. Marques, who is in Washington in the United States as a visiting scholar at the African studies department of Johns Hopkins University, strongly disagrees. In a bold step he has decided to test the independence of the Angolan judiciary by exercising his rights under the 2010 Constitution to formally denounce these alleged law violations to the attorney general. In December he submitted a criminal complaint alleging that Manuel Vicente, the former head of Angola’s powerful state oil company, Sonangol, signed off a deal while still at the parastatal that awarded lucrative oil concessions to an Angolan energy company, Nazaki Oil. (Vicente was this week promoted to minister of state for economic co-ordination, in a move regarded as a precursor to his succeeding Dos Santos.) Marques insists he has documentation to prove that Nazaki is co-owned by Vicente, Minister of State General Helder Manuel Vieira Dias Jr and General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, the presidential adviser and former head of communications. In his complaint Marques accuses Dias and Nascimento of abusing their public positions by exerting “considerable influence over the president, who, as the head of the executive, grants the final approval for petroleum block concessions”. He also questions how Vicente, as president of the state oil company, could have allocated to his own company a concession that was supposed to be awarded through a public tender. He makes other allegations about a loan worth $3.7-million being extended to Nazaki by Cobalt International Energy, the US-based deep-water oil explorer. Cobalt has chosen not to respond publicly to the allegations but, in March last year, the US Securities Exchange Commission, which regulates the securities industry, said it had been in contact with Cobalt regarding the allegations about Nazaki’s ownership and the conflict of interest. It said the US company told it Nazaki had denied verbally and in writing that it had connections with senior government figures. osisa.org