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Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s former president and once Africa’s richest woman, must return to Angola her shares in Portugal’s Galp energy company worth 422 million euros ($ 500 million), an international arbitration tribunal has ruled.
Dos Santos is accused of rejecting billions of dollars from state-owned companies under her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ nearly 40-year rule over the oil-rich South African nation.
The struggling ex-first daughter, whose business assets have been frozen since 2019, was ordered by a Dutch court this week to return shares worth $ 500 million to Angola’s national Sonangol energy group, which she chaired until Lourenco took power.
The transaction under which Dos Santos acquired his stake in the oil and gas company Galp is “invalid”, according to a copy of the verdict that AFP saw on Friday by the Dutch Arbitration Institute (NAI), which is part of the International Arbitration Court.
After paying a 15% deposit from another company’s bank account in the British Virgin Islands, dos Santos paid the rest of the amount in Angola’s local currency, worth a little outside the country, rather than in euros under the contract of sale, according to the NAI.
Santo’s six percent stake in Galp is part of a myriad of investments in Angola and former colonial ruler Portugal, worth about $ 3 billion, according to the Forbes newspaper, which has been reviewed.
The court’s decision – dated July 23 and first reported by the Dutch media late on Thursday – said the purchase of the shares in 2006, acquired through a company owned by dos Santos’ late husband Exem Energy, was illegal.
Dos Santos had consistently denied the crime and condemned all allegations as a politically motivated witch hunt.
Eczem’s lawyers intend to appeal the decision “to the competent court”.
“In this arbitration, the political story is clearly based on the legal analysis,” the company said in a statement sent to AFP on Friday.
One of Sonangol’s lawyers, Yas Banifatemi, told Dutch media that there was “nothing political” in the court’s decision.
“The arbitral tribunal has ruled that Isabel dos Santos has enriched herself with money stolen from Angolan people,” said Banifatemi, quoted in the Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad.
‘The Princess’
President Joao Lourenco has vowed to crack down on corruption since dos Santos retired in 2017, removing his predecessor’s companions from key positions and investigating the previous regime for alleged transplants.
He has targeted several members of the dos Santos family, including Isabel and her younger brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos, who were sentenced to five years in prison for diverting oil revenues last year.
Isabel is the eldest daughter of Angola’s former president, accused of ruling the country with an iron fist and leaving a legacy of poverty and nepotism.
The British-educated billionaire businesswoman has faced several accusations of having looted the public purse and found the money abroad.
In a group of 715,000 files released in January 2020 by the award-winning New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) called the “Luanda Leaks,” dos Santos was accused of siphoning state funds from the oil-rich but impoverished country to assets at sea.
The nickname “the princess” in Angola was accused of having amassed her vast fortune thanks to the support of her authoritarian father.
In Portugal, in addition to Galp, she has large banking investments and has a controlling share in a Portuguese cable TV and telecom company.
In December 2019, Angola’s prosecutor froze bank accounts and assets owned by her and her Congolese husband Sindika Dokolo, who died last year, a move she described as an unfounded political vendetta.
Dos Santos became Africa’s richest woman after Forbes named her the continent’s first female billionaire in 2013. She lost that title when her assets were frozen.
(AFP)
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