Angolan Leader Ousts Predecessor’s Daughter as Oil Chief<br />But Mr. Lourenço vowed during his campaign to distance himself from President dos Santos,<br />and he did so on Wednesday with a flourish, dismissing not only Ms. dos Santos but the company’s board as well.<br />“We don’t know if this is just dos Santos’s cabal having had its share of the trough and now it’s time for the new guard to have their turn.”<br />Sonangol is not only the dominant player in Angola’s oil industry,<br />but also a provider of telecommunications services, radio transmission and air transportation.<br />The state oil company, Sonangol, has long been viewed as a vehicle for promoting the interests<br />of former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country for 38 years.<br />After making a campaign promise to root out nepotism, Angola’s new leader turned his sights Wednesday<br />on the oil industry, ousting his predecessor’s daughter as head of the nation’s largest company.<br />A group of 12 influential lawyers led by David Mendes, an independent member of the National Assembly, had sought to remove her from her<br />position, claiming she was put in place to bury evidence of her father’s embezzlement at the company before he left office in September.<br />Ms. dos Santos was appointed as head of Sonangol last year even though she had no management experience in the oil industry.
