The Cold War era had aggregated control of the Angolan State in a small group; simultaneously, nationalization during that era aggregated ownership of Angola's assets in the State. Combined with the chaos of the war, the MLPA was able to avoid a robust democratization process and instead create a system where the President has a high level of discretion and a low level of accountability with regards to government spending and appointing government positions. These factors allowed for very high levels of corruption during this period of time: direct appropriation of the government budget was common: the IMF estimates that approximately 1 billion dollars per year was appropriated from the state budget during this time. The economic liberalization process was abused to sell state assets (telecom companies, media outlets, large land concessions) to members of the presidential patronage network for a price below market value, such transactions were often funded by loans from the Angolan state or banks.
