Alfa 5 Segurança Industrial e Patrimonial SARL is a

private security company A private security company is a business entity which provides armed or unarmed security services and expertise to clients in the private or public sectors. Overview Private security companies are defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisti ...

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

. It is majority owned by ENDIAMA and holds over half of the security contracts with Angolan

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...

companies.

History

Alfa 5 was founded in 1993 in partnership with senior or retired military officials or their close relatives for the purpose of providing security to ENDIAMA's diamond mines against criminals and

UNITA The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (, abbr. UNITA) is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Liberat ...

rebels. These military and ex-military officials on the Alfa-5 board included then-

General A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air force, air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colone ...

César Pugliese, Rui Carlos Sousa Gaio, the wife of then- FAA chief-of-staff General Agostinho Fernandes Nelumba, and the brother of former FAA chief-of-staff General João de Matos. The name refers to five

Portuguese-speaking African countries The Portuguese-speaking African countries (; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Prínci ...

where its namers hoped it would eventually operate. Since its founding, Alfa 5 developed into a security company of its own, offering services to firms outside of ENDIAMA as well. By the late 90s, Alfa 5 was one of the largest security firms in Angola alongside Teleservice and K&P Mineira. In 2021, ENDIAMA began looking to sell Alfa 5, but struggled to find a buyer.

Human rights abuses

In the early 2000s, employees of Alfa 5 were accused of multiple human rights abuses including unlawful killings of protesters, striking miners, and

garimpeiros Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a blanket term for a type of subsistence mining involving a miner who may or may not be officially employed by a mining company but works independently, mining minerals using their own resources, usually ...

in places such as Luremo and Cuango, and of flexing connections to the military leaders on the Alfa 5 board to avoid consequences. In response to this, General Director of Alfa 5 Francisco Borges Guerra said that Alfa 5's "operations are decentralized", that its leadership did not give such orders, and that "if the individuals should adopt that behavior, it is on their individual conscience. It is what happens a little in those areas. ... I don't believe that this behavior is generalized among our men, but I do not want to overlook those individual cases which could blemish the company's good name. We do have some sad examples." In 2023, Alfa 5's Head of Commercial Development, António Pedro Bartolomeu, told O País reporters that Alfa 5 would like to hire ex-police and ex-military personnel to ensure better discipline, but there aren't enough available.

Services

Alfa 5 focuses on combining human security and electronic systems. It offers security for industrial sites and information centers, transportation of valuable cargo,

demining Demining or mine clearance is the process of removing land mines from an area. In military operations, the object is to rapidly clear a path through a minefield, and this is often done with devices such as mine plows and blast waves. By cont ...

, and security systems including alarms, armored doors, and

safe deposit box A safe deposit box, sometimes referred to as a safety deposit box, is an individually secured container, usually held within a larger safe or bank vault. Safe deposit boxes are generally located in banks, post offices or other institutions. S ...

es.

Clients

Alfa 5 reportedly has clients such as: * Empresa Nacional de Diamantes E.P. (ENDIAMA) * Sociedade de Desenvolvimento Mineiro de Angola (SDM) *

Ministry of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfoli ...

(MINFIN) * Administração Geral Tributária (AGT) * National Bank of Angola (BNA) * Clínica Sagrada Esperança (CSE)

History

Human rights abuses

Services

Clients

References

See also