Angola’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the preventive seizure of several assets of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos, reported The Africa News.
According to the court’s order, the seizure includes 100 percent of the shares of the Embalvidro Company, of which the defendant is the beneficial owner, the balances of all bank accounts owned or co-owned by the former Angolan president’s daughter. Some of these accounts are in countries such as Mozambique, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe.
Angola’s top court has also ordered seizure of 70% of the shares of the Mozambican telecommunications company MSTAR, of which Isabel dos Santos is the effective beneficiary, as well as 100% of the companies UNITEL T+ in Cape Verde and UNITEL STP in São Tomé e Principe.
According to the court’s order, the businesswoman damaged the Angolan state in over 1 billion euros, by way of embezzlement, influence peddling, economic participation in companies and money laundering.
The court’s order was reportedly based on documents from state oil company Sonangol and mobile phone company Unitel, as well as information provided by Portuguese and Dutch authorities.
Dos Santos has been accused of corruption for years. In 2019, Angola’s Supreme Court ordered the seizure of her assets for allegedly steering state funds to companies in which she held stakes during her father’s presidency, including oil giant Sonangol.
Dos Santos’s father, Jose Santos, died in July. He ruled Angola for almost four decades from 1979 to 2017.
She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and claims that the courts in Angola were not independent and that the judiciary in the country was being used to fulfil a political agenda.
Angola’s Supreme Court’s order comes after global police agency Interpol issued a red notice for dos Santos last month. The agency ordered global law enforcement authorities to locate her and provisionally arrest her.
