Angolan Dos Santos’s Crumbling Family Business Empire
Late Angolan leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos appointed family members associates to critical financial positions for the duration of his presidency
MARCO LONGARI
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Critics of Angola’s previous president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died Friday, accused him of stripping the region of a great deal of its extensive oil prosperity to enrich himself and his spouse and children.
Dos Santos, who stepped down in 2017 following 38 yrs of iron-fisted rule, appointed loved ones users to key financial positions throughout his presidency.
Banking, telecoms, media and most drastically oil were amongst the industries that felt the considerably-achieving impact of the Dos Santos brood.
He “privatised the point out to reward his loved ones and a handful of associates,” reported investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, who was remarkably critical of Dos Santos’ alleged plunder.
Here is a evaluate of the principal figures in the “family small business”:
Identified derisively as “the princess”, 49-year-aged Isabel was the general public experience of the Dos Santos enterprise empire.
Her father appointed her to head the point out oil large Sonangol, but she was dismissed soon after his successor Joao Lourenco took place of work.
Isabel dos Santos described herself as an “entrepreneur” on her Twitter account and the US-dependent Forbes magazine after ranked her Africa’s richest lady.
It believed her individual fortune to be as much as $3.5-billion.
She was lively in the telecoms sector and managed Unitel, Angola’s primary cellular phone operator, which she stop in 2020.
She also held shares in Portuguese media large NOS, though investing intensely in the banking sector, sitting down on the boards of Banco de Fomento Angola, Banco BIC — as properly as its Portuguese affiliate — and the market chief BFA.
And together with her now late husband Sindika Dokolo, she owned the luxury Swiss superstar jeweller De Grisogono, which went bust in 2020.
But that business enterprise empire has been mainly dismantled given that a 2020 ICIJ investigation into the shady origins of her fortune.
She is currently being probed for a lengthy record of crimes in Angola, including mismanagement, embezzlement and funds laundering for the duration of her stewardship of the point out-run oil giant Sonangol.
She has vehemently denied the accusations versus her as a politically-determined “witch-hunt”.
Past year she was ordered to surrender a stake in the Portuguese electricity organization Galp really worth an approximated $500 million
In 2013, Jose Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, nicknamed Zenu, was appointed by his father to head up a sovereign wealth fund. At 35, Filomeno was controlling the fund truly worth $5 billion.
6 decades later, he was arrested for fraud, revenue laundering and impact peddling. He was uncovered responsible of hoping to embezzle up to $1.5 billion from the sovereign wealth fund, which he oversaw from 2013 to 2018.
In 2020 he was jailed for 5 years, generating him one particular of the initial associates of the previous presidential spouse and children to be prosecuted as portion of an anti-graft campaign led by Lourenco considering the fact that he arrived to electricity in 2017.
Married to a Portuguese businessman, Welwitschia dos Santos was a top determine in the Angolan media landscape.
Now in her mid 40s, she held distinct positions at TPA, a general public broadcaster and led two tabloid-design and style print titles.
Decrease profile than her fifty percent-sister Isabel, Welwitschia — whose nickname is “Tchize” — managed 1 of Angola’s foremost multimedia and marketing organizations.
She also became the first Angolan female to direct a main football club after she took the reins at Benfica de Luanda.
Following her brother’s conviction, she accused Lourenco of unjustly focusing on the dos Santos family for political good reasons.
“Lourenco (is) employing the youngsters to damage the politically more robust father,” she informed AFP.
Ana Paula, a former air hostess who became Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ next spouse and in accordance to the local media was associated in many diamond miners.
According to Angola’s regular economics journal Expensao, Ana Paula Cristovao Lemos also specifically held 5 p.c of Sol financial institution in addition to the 10 p.c stake she had in the company by way of her foundation.
