Summary of Tom Burgis's The Looting Machine

By IRB Media

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#1 Angola has some of the fastest economic growth rates in the world. The oil that underlies the country’s soils and seabed has fueled the country’s growth, but it has also fueled the fear that the oil brings.

#2 Manuel Vicente, who was the head of Angola’s oil company, Sonangol, drove hard bargains with the oil majors that have spent tens of billions of dollars developing Angola’s offshore oilfields.

#3 The Angolan government, led by President José Eduardo dos Santos, used oil revenue to expand the Futungo, a group that looted the country’s oil. When the International Monetary Fund examined Angola’s national accounts in 2011, it found that between 2007 and 2010 $32 billion had gone missing, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of each of forty-three African countries.

#4 In 2008, as Cobalt was negotiating exploration rights to put its theory about the potential of Angola’s presalt oil frontier to the test, the Angolans made a stipulation. Cobalt would have to take two little-known local companies as junior partners in the venture, with a minority stake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822533417

IRB Media

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Insights on Tom Burgis's The Looting Machine

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Angola has some of the fastest economic growth rates in the world. The oil that underlies the country’s soils and seabed has fueled the country’s growth, but it has also fueled the fear that the oil brings.

#2

Manuel Vicente, who was the head of Angola’s oil company, Sonangol, drove hard bargains with the oil majors that have spent tens of billions of dollars developing Angola’s offshore oilfields.

#3

The Angolan government, led by President José Eduardo dos Santos, used oil revenue to expand the Futungo, a group that looted the country’s oil. When the International Monetary Fund examined Angola’s national accounts in 2011, it found that between 2007 and 2010 $32 billion had gone missing, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of each of forty-three African countries.

#4

In 2008, as Cobalt was negotiating exploration rights to put its theory about the potential of Angola’s presalt oil frontier to the test, the Angolans made a stipulation. Cobalt would have to take two little-known local companies as junior partners in the venture, with a minority stake.

#5

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, passed in 1977, makes it a crime for American companies to pay or offer money or anything of value to foreign officials to win business. It covers both companies and their officers.

#6

The process of enriching local officials via oil and mining ventures is simple: hire local companies, often with little experience in the resource industries, to work alongside the foreign corporations that will do the digging and drilling.

#7

Cobalt went ahead with a deal in a country that was ranked at 168 out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s 2010 corruption perceptions index, without knowing the true identity of its partner. When US authorities informed Cobalt that they had launched a formal investigation into its Angolan operations, the company maintained that everything was above board.

#8

The problem for Cobalt was