Oil companies are among the biggest backers of FESA, the Portuguese acronym for the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation, whose stated aim is to fight poverty in Angola.
FESA's glossy annual reports include numerous photographs of Dos Santos, as well as stories about schools and health clinics the organization has built or refurbished, and about food and medicine it has distributed to the poor. One Christmas, FESA arranged to have a Santa Claus land by helicopter on a soccer field and hand out toys to hundreds of kids.
"The foundation is doing a great job of supplementing the state's efforts, because the state lacks funds," said Jaime, the deputy prime minister.
FESA also nominated Dos Santos for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.
A copy of a 2001 BP memorandum obtained by The Times said that FESA was "increasingly seen as a political apparatus that supports the presidential agenda." It said that the company's donations to the foundation "could be seen as 'contributions to political parties,' thus contravening our ethics." Spokesman Toby Odone said the company contributed $1.2 million, mostly given by Amoco before its merger with BP six years ago.
Odone said the company adopted a formal policy of stopping all corporate political donations in April 2002, and made no contributions to FESA beyond that point. "Therefore we were not breaking our ethical policies" when the company previously donated to the foundation, he said.
The BP memo offered similar warnings about contributions to the Lwini Foundation, which is headed by Dos Santos' wife and says its goal is to help Angolans injured by land mines during the civil war.
The foundation rejected requests for copies of an annual report or accounting of expenditures. Its website lists only a few activities, including an event to honor Princess Diana, who had visited Angola in 1997.
Odone said Amoco had contributed to Lwini but BP has halted donations. ChevronTexaco, which is a contributor to Lwini, said in a statement that the foundation had an auditing committee "that provides an annual opinion of [its] accounts."
FESA and Lwini did not respond to interview requests.
In 1998, Royal Dutch/Shell Group donated $400,000 to another organization, the Kissama Foundation, which was set up by senior generals to rehabilitate a national park near Luanda.
