The scale of Angola's corruption problem only really registered when the senior army officer leant forward and whispered the magic word "diamonds".
"It is illegal to buy diamonds in Angola but if you know the right people they can fly you over the border to Kinshasa [capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo] and you can buy as many Angolan diamonds as you want," he said.
In Angola they use a Portuguese euphemism for "bribe". They say you pay a little extra so a person can have a gasosa or drink, but the sort of bribes being paid could buy more than just a little refreshment.
Whether it is army officers smuggling gems, government officials demanding multi-million-pound bribes for oil contracts or teachers wanting money for exam certificates, millions of pounds are being misappropriated every week.
And with more than one million of its 11 million population in need of food aid after the end of decades of civil war, corruption in Angola means yet more human suffering.
"Every person could be fed, every baby could be vaccinated, every bridge could be rebuilt and every mine could be lifted if the government of Angola properly used the millions it steals each year," a foreign aid worker said.
One provincial governor from the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, was recently exposed for selling schools to a friend who then charged pupils an attendance fee.
The wives of senior MPLA members go abroad for cosmetic surgery using a government fund meant to allow sick Angolans to travel for treatment.
So bad is corruption in Angola that it represents a grave challenge to the credibility of the new African Union which is supposedly committed to supporting good governance.
"The end of the war in Angola means that right now the main institution in the country is corruption," said Rafael Marques, a dissident journalist from Luanda who has been jailed by the Angolan government for his exposes.
"The system is rotten to the core and until you change the entire system nothing will change."
The systemic scale of corruption across the region compounds the task facing aid workers as they fight the consequences of the worst drought in the region in a decade.
Malawi has been accused by the International Monetary Fund of corruptly selling its grain reserves, just months before drought caused the harvest to fail.
In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's land seizures have ruined the commercial farming sector, turning a country that was an exporter of grain into one where more than half the population faces chronic food shortages.
But at the top of the corruption charts is the Angolan oil industry, contributing more than 90 per cent of Angola's £2 billion annual foreign earnings from enormous off-shore oil reserves.
Far from funnelling these earnings into much-needed social programmes, the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been accused of stealing up to a third of the annual income - hundreds of millions of pounds.
Global Witness, an international environmental watchdog, has also accused the MPLA of mortgaging the next few years of oil revenues in exchange for cheap loans.
Defenders of the government said it was necessary to raise funds to buy weapons to fight Unita rebels under Jonas Savimbi, the brutal but charismatic leader whose death in February led to the end of 41 years of conflict.
Now the end of the war has increased pressure on Mr dos Santos to show greater transparency in his country's finances.
The IMF has indicated that it will be reluctant to fund large-scale redevelopment in Angola unless some move is made towards accounting for the country's oil money.
But Mr dos Santos has come out fighting, accusing the IMF of trying to interfere in the sovereignty of his country.
He has hired seven public relations consultancies in Washington to try to improve Angola's standing among US congressmen, as well as making clear that oil companies will not be welcome in Angola if they reveal sharp business practices.
A footnote in BP's 1999 annual figures stated that it had spent £75 million on a "signature fee" to win an offshore production contract. The payment never appeared in any government accounts.
BP has subsequently declined to publish details of signature fees paid for its three other big contracts in Angola.
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