The daughter of Angola’s former president, Isabel dos Santos, has been ordered to have assets worth around $1 billion “preventively” seized by the country’s Supreme Court.
She allegedly possesses in “all banking institutions,” according to the court document reported by Lusa, should be seized because investigators allegedly have evidence of embezzlement and money laundering.
According to Lusa, the seizure also covers all of her holdings in the Angolan company Embalvidro as well as all of his shares in the Cape Verdean telecom firms Unitel T+ and Unitel STP.
A total of 70% of her shares in the Mozambican telecom companies MStar and Upstar Comunicacoes should also be taken.
Dos Santos, once the richest lady in Africa, has been accused of corruption for years. In 2019, the Supreme Court of Angola ruled that her assets should be seized for allegedly using state funds to benefit businesses in which she had stakes while her father was president, notably Sonangol, the country’s largest oil company.
Her father, veteran freedom fighter Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who helped Angola transition from Marxism to crony capitalism, passed away in July. Up until 2017, he governed Angola for almost 40 years.
She has not responded to this development. She has continuously denied any wrongdoing and said in November that judges in Angola were “used to fulfill a political purpose” and that the country’s courts were “not independent.”
International law enforcement agencies are urged to find and temporarily detain dos Santos after Interpol issued a red notice for her in November.
