Angola’s probe of dos Santos ‘improper and unfair’: lawyer

JOHANNESBURG: A court order that froze assets of Angola´s billionaire former first daughter Isabel dos Santos was “unfair, improper” and based on fake documents, one of her lawyers has said. Dos Santos, said to be the wealthiest woman in Africa, is accused of diverting billions of dollars from Angolan state companies during her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos´s near four-decade rule of the oil-rich African nation. Last December, a civil court in the capital Luanda issued a “preventive” order to freeze her businesses assets as part of a crackdown on graft by former president dos Santos´s successor Joao Lourenco.

The 47-year-old businesswoman was “hit with this tsunami of allegations coming out of Angola based on secret documents — which at that point she hadn´t seen, and faked documents,” said lawyer Dan Morrison. “She didn´t have a chance to defend herself,” London-based Morrison told AFP in an interview on Thursday. “This is manifestly unfair and improper,” he said. “The damage is already done, whatever we prove in a court of law.

His client is a symbol of a small elite that prospered during the 38-year rule of Jose Eduardo dos Santos in sub-Saharan Africa´s second oil-producing country. Since her father retired in 2017, Isabel dos Santos´s business empire has been targeted by Lourenco. - ´Irregular money transfers´

Just months after he came into power, and in the name of tackling corruption, Lourenço unceremoniously sacked dos Santos from the state-owned oil corporation Sonangol which she headed. Two years later her business assets and those of her Congolese husband Sindika Dokolo were ordered frozen. The New Year´s Eve order immediately set off a flurry of developments. Less than three weeks later, a consortium of journalists published the so-called “Luanda Leaks” alleging she funnelled Angolan state funds to offshore assets. Days after that, the Angola prosecuting authorities said they were probing “irregular money transfers” from Sonangol and Sodiam, a national diamond marketing firm. At the time, the public prosecution estimated the embezzled funds ran into about $1 billion. It has now revised the figure to more than $5 billion. Dos Santos herself has denounced Luanda´s actions as a politically-motivated “witchhunt”. After analysing a trove of more than 700,000 leaked documents, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) also accused her of looting state coffers. The journalists´ report was “based on many fake documents and false information,” she tweeted, describing it as “a coordinated political attack” constructed by the Angolan government.