The daughter of Angola’s longtime former president accumulated riches through embezzlement and money laundering, an Angolan court claims. To recover what was looted, the government froze her assets. Then Portuguese authorities followed suit. 



Eight years ago, Forbes declared Isabel dos Santos the richest woman in Africa, worth an estimated $3.5 billion. The daughter of Angola’s longtime former president grew immensely wealthy in a textbook case of how to loot a country. Now, with her father out of office, her empire is a shadow of what it once was, with corruption charges levied against her by her country, assets frozen by courts in three different nations and a lawsuit claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid debt in a fourth country. Forbes assumes she has no access and likely little chance to gain back control of the frozen assets—together worth about $1.6 billion if not frozen—so we give her no value for them and by our calculations she is no longer a billionaire. As a result, Forbes has dropped Dos Santos, who was worth an estimated $2.2 billion in January 2020, from our <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2021/01/22/the-forbes-billionaires-list-africas-richest-people-2021/?sh=136591dd48f5">newly released 2021 list of Africa’s richest people. </a>



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49808" width="502" height="334" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-914549978-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 502px) 100vw, 502px" /><figcaption>(Photographer: Daniel Rodgrigues/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



The onetime African “princess” is by no means a pauper. She’s reported to have a home on a private island in Dubai, another residence in London and a <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/how-africas-richest-woman-exploited-family-ties-shell-companies-and-inside-deals-to-build-an-empire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$35 million yacht</a>. She likely has bank accounts and assets that Forbes and legal authorities have yet to track. She is said to be splitting her time between Dubai—where her husband, Sindika Dokolo, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/11/01/husband-of-isabel-dos-santos-africas-richest-woman-dies-at-age-48/?sh=27419fb43143">died</a> in a diving accident in October—and London, where Dokolo’s funeral was held in November at Westminster Cathedral. Through a spokesperson Dos Santos declined to comment.  



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-1024x681.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49811" width="495" height="328" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-959554140-600x399.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px" /><figcaption> Isabel dos Santos (L) and Sindika Dokolo arrive at the amfAR Gala Cannes 2018 at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 17, 2018 in Cap d&#8217;Antibes, France. (Photo by Dave Benett/amfAR/Dave Benett/WireImage for amfAR)</figcaption></figure></div>



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-the-road-to-riches">The Road To Riches</h4>



As&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;spelled out in an August&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/08/14/how-isabel-dos-santos-took-the-short-route-to-become-africas-richest-woman/?sh=76a680a445f5">2013 article</a>&nbsp;(co-written and reported by Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais), Isabel dos Santos is the eldest daughter of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017. While he ran the poverty-stricken but oil-rich country, she garnered significant stakes in Angola’s strategic industries—banking, cement, diamonds and telecom—making her the most influential businessperson in her homeland. More than half of her assets were stakes in Portuguese companies, adding international credibility. (Angola, a former Portuguese colony, achieved independence in 1975.) When&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;outed her as a billionaire in January 2013, the government disseminated the news as a matter of national pride, living proof that the country had arrived.



As best we could trace, every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stemmed either from taking a chunk of a company that wanted to do business in the country or from a stroke of the president&#8217;s pen that cut her into the action. Her story was a rare window into the tragic kleptocratic narrative that grips resource-rich countries around the world.



In Portugal, the companies Dos Santos invested in—several banks, a cable TV company and an engineering firm—turned a blind eye to the questionable source of her investment funds, says Ana Gomes, a former member of the European Parliament and a member of Portugal’s Socialist Party (and currently a candidate for president in Portugal). “When she bought stakes in banks in Portugal . . . I kept saying, ‘What is the origin of the money? Why are you allowing her to launder money through our system?’” laments Gomes, who filed details of the alleged money laundering with Portuguese judicial authorities starting in 2016. No action was taken in response.



In early 2020 Dos Santos sued Gomes for defamation in a Portuguese court. She took issue with Gomes tweeting and going on TV saying that Dos Santos’ bank was a money-laundering machine for her. Dos Santos lost the case, but her lawyers have appealed the ruling.



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-the-empire-begins-to-crumble">The Empire Begins To Crumble</h4>



Dos Santos’ empire began to unravel under the leadership of Angola’s new president, João Lourenço, who took office in September 2017 after Dos Santos’ father retired. Lourenço vowed to attack the corruption for which Angola had become well-known. (Transparency International ranked the country as one of the most corrupt in the world.) Two months into his tenure he dismissed Dos Santos as the head of state oil firm Sonangol, a position to which her father’s government had named her in June 2016



But the bigger move came in December 2019. As part of a corruption investigation, an Angolan court froze assets in the country that belonged to Dos Santos and her husband—including a stake in mobile telecom firm Unitel and in several banks. The court order stated that Exem Energy BV, an entity owned by Dos Santos and Dokolo, had promised to repay at least $75 million it owes to Sonangol, but had failed to do so. The court also claimed that the couple and one of their business associates had caused the Angolan government to lose at least $1.1 billion. In January 2020 Angola’s attorney general <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/01/23/as-angola-accuses-billionaire-isabel-dos-santos-of-fraud-her-empire-begins-to-unravel/?sh=2702d14449da">charged Dos Santos and Dokolo</a> with embezzlement and money laundering. At the time, Dos Santos issued a statement saying that the allegations against her were “extremely misleading and untrue” and that she had been a “private businesswoman” who had “always operated within the law.” 



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-rounded"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="647" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-1024x647.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49812" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-1024x647.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-300x190.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-768x485.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-1536x970.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-2048x1294.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/GettyImages-1134625795-600x379.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Angola&#8217;s President Joao Lourenco. (Photo credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



That same month, a flood of details about Dos Santos and her assets became public through the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Luanda Leaks</a>, a collection of more than 700,000 documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. It confirmed the reporting&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;did in 2013 about Dos Santos corruptly obtaining stakes in Angolan companies. Luanda Leaks also shined a light on her enablers: consulting and accounting firms like McKinsey and PwC, as well as a coterie of bankers and lawyers who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/world/africa/isabel-dos-santos-angola.html?action=click&amp;module=Intentional&amp;pgtype=Article" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">helped Dos Santos obtain her fortune</a>&nbsp;and move it offshore. In a December 2020 statement, PwC said that when the allegations came to light it “took immediate steps to end our relationship with companies involved” and that some senior employees left the firm or were subject to “other remedial measures.” A spokesman for McKinsey says the firm no longer counts Dos Santos or her companies as clients. So far, none of the professional service firms have been charged with any wrongdoing, though last year a Portuguese regulator did&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/portuguese-regulator-calls-for-criminal-prosecution-of-auditors-following-luanda-leaks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">investigate auditing firms</a>&nbsp;that worked with Dos Santos and reportedly found that some had not taken steps to stop possible money laundering.



Dos Santos has also done business with Forbes Media, owner of&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;magazine and Forbes.com. Her Angola-based company Zap Midia is the licensee holder for&nbsp;Forbes Angola&nbsp;and&nbsp;Forbes Portugal&nbsp;magazines. Zap Midia is listed in the Angolan court filing as one of the companies whose assets were to be frozen.



One particularly galling revelation in Luanda Leaks: Documents from 2006 that showed Dos Santos’ husband paid Sonangol just $15 million (€11 million) for a stake in Portuguese oil firm Galp that was worth $99 million (€75 million). The balance of the purchase was essentially an interest-free loan from the Angolan government. That stake in Galp, held through Netherlands-registered entity Exem Energy BV, is currently worth about $550 million. But those shares have been frozen by a court in the Netherlands,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/dutch-court-orders-key-business-associate-of-isabel-dos-santos-removed-pending-investigation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to ICIJ</a>.



Dos Santos is far from the only person in her circle who got rich off the state. Corruption runs deep in the Angolan political elite. “Some of the biggest crooks seem to have made a gentleman’s agreement with [Angolan President] Lourenço and are being let off the hook,” says Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, a professor of African politics at the University of Oxford. He notes that in the past six months, Lourenço has expanded the anticorruption fight to include more figures than just the Dos Santos family.



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading" id="h-freeze-out">Freeze-Out</h4>



A court in Angola made the first move. Then courts in other countries froze assets that belong to Isabel dos Santos and her husband.



<ul><li>December 2019Angolan court orders freeze of assets including stake in mobile telecom firm Unitel and two banks, together worth at least $300 million</li><li>January 2020Angola’s attorney general charges Isabel Dos Santos and her husband Sindika Dokolo with embezzlement and money laundering</li><li>February 2020Portugal’s <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/portugal-seizes-isabel-dos-santos-bank-accounts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">public prosecutor’s office </a>freezes dozens of Dos Santos’ bank accounts in the country.</li><li>April 2020A Lisbon court freezes her shares in Portugal’s telecom and cable TV firm Nos, a stake worth nearly $500 million.</li><li>July 2020Portugal’s Economy Minister announces the nationalization of engineering firm Efacec Power Solutions, of which Dos Santos owns nearly 72%, worth an estimated $225 million</li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Authorities in Portugal have also taken steps to recover assets owned by Dos Santos. In July the government went to the extreme of nationalizing Efacec, an engineering firm majority owned by Dos Santos, reportedly out of concern for the company’s survival. In April, a Portuguese court froze her roughly $500 million holding in cable TV and broadband firmNos. Her investment in Nos shows just how welcomed Dos Santos was by Portugal’s business elite: she held the shares through ZOPT, a partnership with the family of Belmiro de Azevedo, a respected Portuguese billionaire who died in 2017.&nbsp;The shareholders of ZOPT are in the process of dissolving the partnership, according to a spokesperson for Nos.



Dos Santos is also being pursued in the U.K. Unitel, the Angolan mobile phone provider where she was a 25% owner,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/unitel-sues-isabel-dos-santos-company-as-her-corporate-empire-continues-to-crumble/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sued Dos Santos in London</a>&nbsp;late last year, claiming her Dutch company, Unitel International Holdings BV, had defaulted in 2019 on multiple loans issued by the telecom firm Unitel beginning in 2012. The company is seeking repayment of $430 million.&nbsp;



In sum, the assets frozen in Angola are probably worth at least $300 million, while the assets frozen or nationalized by Portugal and the Netherlands together would currently amount to about $1.3 billion, but the likelihood of Dos Santos ever getting them back is uncertain. Her homes, yacht, cash and other assets could be worth as much as $400 million, but there’s also that $430 million in unpaid debt that Unitel is seeking.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Where will all these court cases lead? In August, Isabel’s brother, Jose Filomeno dos Santos, was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53774288" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sentenced to five years in jail&nbsp;</a>in Angola for transferring $500 million out of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which he headed. The justice system moves slowly in both Angola and Portugal, so no one is expecting a quick resolution to the cases against Isabel dos Santos. “I’m forseeing years and years of litigation in courts, and while that happens the Angolan people won’t receive the money that was taken,” says Karina Carvalho, executive director of Transparency International Portugal. “That is why we need to take action on asset recovery and victims’ compensation.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“In a lot of these authoritarian places, economic power derives from political power. The moment you lose political power, you’re vulnerable all over the world.”</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Asset recovery is typically a long shot. There is no guarantee that the prosecutors will prevail and release the frozen assets to the Angolan state.&nbsp;A 2014 report from the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Program, aptly titled “Few and Far,” noted that a huge gap remained between the assets recovered—just $147 million between 2010 and 2012—and the $20 billion to $40 billion estimated to have been stolen from developing countries each year.



When Angola first announced the charges against Dos Santos in early 2020, several news reports mentioned that the country would issue an international arrest warrant for her. So far, that has not happened. Dos Santos is able to move freely between Dubai and the U.K.&nbsp;



Still, life is not the same as it was. “She’s been humbled, she’s been cut down to size,” says Oxford professor Soares de Oliveira. “It just shows that in a lot of these authoritarian places, economic power derives from political power, not the other way around. The moment you lose political power, you can be had. You’re vulnerable all over the world.”



By Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes Staff

PORTUGAL-ANGOLA-ECONOMY-INDUSTRY

How Isabel Dos Santos, Once Africa’s Richest Woman, Went Broke

Isabel dos Santos amassed an empire worth more than $2 billion as the daughter of Angola’s former long-time president. Now it looks like that empire is beginning to crumble.



On Wednesday—as the Attorney
General of Angola held a press conference to provisionally charge Isabel dos
Santos with embezzlement and money laundering, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51218501" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according
to the BBC</a>—a bank in
Portugal where she has been a significant shareholder issued a statement saying
that Dos Santos’ stake is being sold.



EuroBic, a small privately
held bank in Lisbon in which Dos Santos has owned a 42.5% stake, issued a <a href="https://www.eurobic.pt/eurobic/noticias-eurobic/Comunicado-de-Imprensa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement on Monday</a> that it was severing its business relationship
with Dos Santos and the entities related to her. On Wednesday <a href="https://www.eurobic.pt/eurobic/noticias-eurobic/Comunicado-de-Imprensa---Estrutura-Acionista" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EuroBic announced</a> that Dos Santos had decided to sell her stake in
the bank, which has about $8 billion in assets. Forbes recently valued Dos Santos’
42.5% stake at around $200 million.



Dos Santos has come under
intense scrutiny this past week after a number of media outlets, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/world/africa/isabel-dos-santos-angola.html?action=click&amp;module=Intentional&amp;pgtype=Article" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51128950" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBC</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/19/angola-state-oil-company-sonangol-isabel-dos-santos-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Guardian</a>, published articles based on
the “Luanda Leaks”—a cache of some 700,000 documents related to Dos Santos’
allegedly corrupt business dealings that were released to the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).



Dos Santos was appointed to
head Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol, in 2016, when her father was still
president of the country. (He retired in 2017 after ruling Angola for 38
years.)



According to an article in<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/19/angola-state-oil-company-sonangol-isabel-dos-santos-investigation?utm_term=Autofeed&amp;CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&amp;utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1579458161" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> The
Guardian</a>, while Dos Santos
was heading up Sonangol, she allegedly arranged for a transfer of $57 million
on one day in November 2017 from Sonangol’s bank account to a Dubai company,
Matter Business Solutions, run by Paula Oliveira, a woman who The Guardian says is
apparently a close friend of Dos Santos’.



It turns out that the Sonangol
bank account from which the funds were transferred was a EuroBic account. In
its statement severing ties with Dos Santos, EuroBic also said that the
payments ordered by Sonangol to Matter Business Solutions “respected the legal
and regulatory procedures formally applicable . . . between this bank and
Sonangol, namely those related to the prevention of money laundering.”



The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51224655" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBC is
reporting</a> that an employee of EuroBic who managed the
Sonangol account, Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha, 45, was found dead in Lisbon on
Wednesday. A police source told the BBC that “everything points to
suicide.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dos Santos issued a statement on Thursday saying, “The
allegations which have been made against me over the last few days are
extremely misleading and untrue,” and adding that “I am a private businesswoman
who has spent 20 years building successful companies from the ground up,” and
that “I have always operated within the law and all my transactions have been
approved by lawyers, bankers, auditors and regulators.” 



Forbes first dug into the murky origins of Isabel
dos Santos’ fortune, with help from Angolan investigative journalist Rafael
Marques de Morais, in <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/08/14/how-isabel-dos-santos-took-the-short-route-to-become-africas-richest-woman/#52e2d7c345f5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an in-depth investigation in 2013</a>. In late
December 2019, an Angolan court issued a freeze of Dos Santos’ assets in
Angola—assets that Forbes estimates are <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/01/03/angolan-billionaires-assets-frozen-by-countrys-court-worth-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars/#278178507acb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">worth hundreds of millions of dollars</a>. Most
of Dos Santos’ fortune—which <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/isabel-dos-santos/#4ec97300523f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes estimates at $2.1 billion</a>—lies in assets held outside of Angola, primarily in Portugal. 



The natural question: Will other Portuguese companies in which Dos Santos is a shareholder follow in EuroBic’s footsteps? 



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/">Kerry A. Dolan, </a>Forbes Staff 



Isabel dos Santos features in the 2020 Africa Billionaire’s list in the February issue of FORBES AFRICA. The news of the provisional charges against her for embezzlement and money laundering was unavailable at the time of going to press.

Tag: Isabel Dos Santos

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

How Isabel Dos Santos, Once Africa’s Richest Woman, Went Broke

As Angola Accuses Billionaire Isabel Dos Santos Of Fraud, Her Empire Begins To Unravel