Angolan Tycoon's Frozen Funds Highlight KPMG's Role In Offshore Secrecy

Global accounting giant helped businessman move tens of millions of dollars offshore.

- Will Fitzgibbon

MAURITIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE frozen 91 bank accounts linked to investor Jean-Claude Bastos, a key figure from the Paradise Papers who has close connections to Angola’s former leaders. [See nose200: A most unsaintly president.]

The Mauritius Supreme Court froze the accounts in four judgments issued this month as part of probes involving Bastos [also known as Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais] and a $3 billion Angolan sovereign wealth fund investment, according to Mauritian newspaper L’Express.

Mauritius’s offshore regulator also suspended the licences of seven investment companies linked to Bastos’s management company, Quantum Global, based in Zurich.

The response by authorities is the latest fallout from the publication of the Paradise Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in November 2017.

The Paradise Papers not only uncovered details about Bastos and Quantum Global’s management of Angola’s fund but identified their association with global accounting giant KPMG.

KPMG worked with Bastos and Quantum Management in Mauritius as tens of millions of dollars were shuffled by them from Angola to Mauritius and beyond.

The Paradise Papers revealed that Quantum Global established seven entities in Mauritius to manage billions of dollars on behalf of the Angolan government fund after similar proposals in Jersey and the Isle of Man were turned down or dropped.

Bastos and Quantum Global, like many other offshore players, benefited from close relationships with lawyers and bankers as well as accounting giant KPMG. ICIJ has recently published documents that underscore these ties.