Due Diligence and Business Intelligence in Angola.

LUANDA, Angola - July 24, 2013 - PRLog -- WIS International www.wis-int.com  have been undertaking due diligence and business intelligence in Angola for several years.  Problems facing companies undertaking due diligence in Angola is that although government departments state that commercial information they hold is public information, it is not. It is only public to the parties and companies mentioned in the official documents. Requesting official commercial records is a non-starter; companies do not have to publish accounts. Searching courts for litigations is time consuming and difficult. It takes several years to get a case to court, so even when something is found it can be a years old matter.

Angola with its fast growing economy its wealth of Gas, Oil, Diamonds and other natural resources attract many international companies to do business their as well as forming partnerships with existing local companies. These companies demand transparency and risk reports when doing business with other companies and Angola is no exception.

If you can gain access to documentation it tends not to be up to date, if the company you are looking at is fully or part owned by the Government then there is very little chance you will get any information.

Some due diligence companies say that they can obtain such documents from the departments, but if they can then it will involve paying an official. This is in clear breach of the FCPA of the US and the Bribery Act of the UK. The countries open source information is limited, although there are many websites saying they can do amazing things on your behalf.  

We ask the instructing client to ask the subject company to supply all their commercial documents that can then be verified, but as mentioned above they can be out of date. Many clients do not want to ask the subject and in many cases the subject company do not know they are being looked at. In  these cases it can make the investigation very difficult and not all information will be accessed.

There are a number of Government departments that will confirm over the phone certain information like a companies licensing and its legality to operate in a certain sectors. The problem is that it may take a week of calling to be able to talk to the correct person that can answer your question. There are certain questions that can only be answered by a certain individual and no one else. Don’t even think about sending an email as it may take a fortnight to get an answer if you’re lucky.  

Getting companies to talk about other companies or people and their reputation is difficult as they think they are doing you or the subject a favour, and favours are normally paid for. But if they are willing to give you a reference it can take them a week or more to respond to you.

Many companies operating in this country do not have websites, the ones that do, tend not to have much information on them that is of interest to the investigator.

Local Angolan press is well covered and there are many on line media sources. We find that many Angolan businesses and executives have some commercial ties with Portugal this gives us an additional avenue to explore. Companies in the Gas and Oil industry tend to have associations with US, UK, SA and French companies.

WIS International have on many occasions spoken to officials and ministers in Angola regarding the lack of open source information held by government, we have used the argument that having this old system is damaging business opportunities of many of their countries companies. I am not suggesting that these request have fallen on deaf ears but it takes time in Angola to get things done on a daily basis let alone on a long term  national basis.

WIS International have over the years built up a reliable feed source  of information about companies and people in Angola.

Go to the link below to see what we do in Angola

http://www.wis-int.com/about/due-diligence-angola-business-report-angola-business-intelligence-angola-detectives-angola-corporate-risk-angola_3418