Luanda Leaks: How Africa’s wealthiest woman diverted funds, exploited Angola & built her empire


Subhro Prakash Ghosh | Luanda | Updated: 21-01-2020 18:08 IST | Created: 21-01-2020 18:08 IST
Luanda Leaks: How Africa’s wealthiest woman diverted funds, exploited Angola & built her empire
Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a self-made beneficiary of multi-billion dollars business empire with decades of corruption and nepotism. Image Credit: Wikipedia
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Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos is currently dwelling under big controversies. She is under scrutiny by her bank and the government of Angola. This happened after over 700,000 documents were leaked that showed she severely exploited Angola’s wealth to enrich herself.

Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former President, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a self-made beneficiary of multi-billion dollars business empire with decades of corruption and nepotism. Although 46-year-old Africa’s richest woman denies all the accusations arising from the Luanda Leaks, a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (through extensive investigation with 36 media partners) exposes two decades of unscrupulous deals, which made Isabel dos Santos South Africa’s wealthiest woman and left oil and diamond-rich Angola one of the poorest counties over the planet.

Based on more than 715,000 confidential financial and business records and hundreds of interviews, Luanda Leaks were provided to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) by a Paris-based advocacy group named Platform to Protect Whistle blowers in Africa. Luanda Leaks contain emails, internal memos from Isabel dos Santos companies, contracts, consultant reports, tax returns, private audits and videos of business meetings. Though the documents (in English and Portuguese) date back to 1980, those also cover the last decade. Those also include descriptions of lavish homes in Monaco and Lisbon and a deluxe vacation featuring private aircraft and a speedboat. Emails show underlings fretting about risky bank loans and financial advisers fielding dos Santos’ requests to pay a bill from luxury fashion designer Valentino and open a new bank account offshore, ICIJ’s official site revealed.

According to ICIJ, Isabel dos Santos and Sindika Dokolo including their intermediaries constructed a business empire with over 400 companies and subsidiaries in 41 nations including at least 94 in secrecy jurisdictions like Malta, Mauritius and Hong Kong. Over the past decade, these companies got consulting jobs, loans, public works contracts and licenses worth billions of dollars from the government of Angola. The couple also used their archipelago of shell organizations to avoid scrutiny and invest in real estate, energy and media businesses. Their businesses are connected to several consulting fees, loans and contracts to shell companies they control in the British Virgin Islands, Malta and the Netherlands.

ICIJ has identified one severe case that reveals thousands of families were forcibly removed from their Luanda homes on land that was part of a redevelopment project involving a Isabel dos Santos company. Even big companies from the Netherlands and China continued to join hands with the family’s private businesses. The Angolan government officials are investigating whether and how she and her associates looted hundreds of millions of dollars from Angolan state oil company, Sonangol and Sodiam, national diamond trading company. That includes a USD 38 million payment in November 2017 from Sonangol to a company in Dubai controlled by an Isabel dos Santos associate, a transfer ordered hours after Angola’s new Head of State, João Lourenço fired her from her job as head of the state oil company, the report reveals.

The government of Angola is giving its efforts to recover USD 1.1 billion that is reportedly owed by Isabel dos Santos, her husband and the close associate of the couple, Mário Filipe Moreira Leite da Silva. She has rejected calling government on a ‘witch hunt against her family’ in recent multiple interviews.

Isabel dos Santos is currently living outside Angola for the last two years. She has a net worth of about USD 2 billion. The Angolan court froze their local assets last month. The Bank of Portugal is seeking information from Lisbon-based bank, EuroBic where she holds a stake of 42.5 percent. EuroBic has stated after the Luanda Leaks that it has contemplated to “terminate the commercial relationship with entities controlled by the universe of the shareholder Isabel dos Santos and people closely related to it.”

Let’s have a look how Isabel dos Santos gradually started as a businesswoman earlier. In the past two decades, she has held management positions in a number of companies listed on the European stock exchanges. In the early 1990’s, she returned from London to join José Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda. Then she started working as a project manager engineer for Urnana 2000 followed by setting up a trucking business. She subsequently forayed into telecoms with the widespread utilization of walkie-talkie. Then she commenced her first business by opening the Miami Beach Club in 1997. Miami Beach Club was one of the first night clubs and beach restaurants on the Luanda Island. Gradually she went on expanding her business for years leading to the creation of several holdings in Angola and mostly abroad, especially in Portugal. Her father appointed her as Chairwoman of the Angolan state oil company, Sonangol in mid-2016. Similar controversial appointments of children by José Eduardo dos Santos was short-lived as the new President, João Lourenço ostracized her around two months after being sworn into office.

The Luanda Provincial Court ordered on December 30 last year the preventive seizure of her personal bank accounts, her Congolese husband, Sindika Dokolo and Mário Filipe Moreira Leite da Silva. The three businesspeople reportedly ventured into deals with the Angolan state via Sonangol and Sodiam (a public diamond sales company). Angola suffered a loss of USD 1.14 billion as a consequent of the deals among them.

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