João Lourenço

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João Lourenço, 2018

João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço (born March 5, 1954 in Lobito , Benguela Province ) is an Angolan politician and former officer. He has been President of Angola since 2017. Before that he was general and vice-president of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA, German  popular movement for the liberation of Angola ). From 2014 to 2017 he was Minister of Defense.

Career

Lourenço is the son of Sequeira João Lourenço from the Malanje Province and Josefa Gonçalves Cipriano Lourenço from the Namibe Province . His father was a nurse and his mother a seamstress. Both have already passed away. Already in his youth, Lourenço joined the current ruling party MPLA, which fought for independence from Portugal in the Portuguese colonial war and the civil war in Angola and was supported by Moscow . In the military he received  artillery training and served as political commissioner of the Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola(FAPLA). Between 1991 and 1998 he was Secretary of the Politburo for Information.

Lourenço studied in what was then the  Soviet Union and earned a degree in history . He later became a general in the Angolan armed forces . When the civil war ended, he went into politics. He was nominated by the MPLA to succeed the long-term president José Eduardo dos Santos , who was no longer running for another term. He won the presidential election in August 2017 and was sworn in as president on September 26, 2017. A few months later he dismissed the son of the former president José Filomeno dos Santos .

During his tenure, he applied for an injunction to seize assets from Isabel dos Santos , which was ultimately granted in 2020 due to a corruption investigation against dos Santos.

During Lourenço's term of office, Luaty Beirão criticized the fact that the judiciary in Angola was still controlled by the government.

Private

João Lourenço is married to Ana Afonso Dias Lourenço and has six children. In addition to Portuguese, he also speaks English, Russian and Spanish. He is a shareholder in Banco Sol and Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI) and Orion - Agência de Publicidade e Produção , a company that was involved in a corruption scandal with the Brazilian company Odebrecht . He is also on the list of MPLA politicians who have received loans in the millions from the defunct Banco do Espírito Santo Angola (BESA) without any loan guarantee . Lourenço lives in the Município Talatona in an apartment financed by Banco BIC , owned by Isabel dos Santos.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ João Lourenço is the new President of Angola spiegel.de from September 26, 2017
  2. ↑ Long-term President Eduardo dos Santos joins the second row neue-deutschland.de, from 23 August 2017
  3. ↑ a b Fabian Urech: She was considered the inviolable "princess" of Angola - now her assets have been frozen | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed January 12, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Fabian Urech: She was considered the inviolable “princess” of Angola - now her assets have been frozen | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed January 12, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Quem é João Lourenço, o terceiro Presidente de Angola após Agostinho Neto e José Eduardo dos Santos? dw.com , September 26, 2017, accessed January 12, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Lourenço, João
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lourenço, João Manuel Gonçalves (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Angolan general and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Lobito , Benguela Province