4 Angolan advocacy teams have referred to as on Portuguese and Angolan judicial authorities to elucidate why property seized in Portugal from Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former president and the topic of ICIJ’s 2020 Luanda Leaks investigation, haven’t but been returned to Angola.
In an Aug. 5 open letter addressed to Angola’s legal professional common Hélder Pitta Gróz and his Portuguese counterpart, Lucília Gago, the 4 anti-corruption organizations expressed “concern on the information that has come to mild in latest days that the Angolan and Portuguese authorities proceed to disagree on the subject of the return of Isabel dos Santos’ property seized in Portugal following the scandal often called Luanda Leaks.”
The signatories famous that dos Santos could have “already managed to divert a big a part of these funds to tax havens or to her ‘gilded cage’ in Dubai.”
Dos Santos at the moment lives in Dubai and is needed in Angola in reference to a number of crimes together with cash laundering, embezzlement and tax fraud. Luanda Leaks charted dos Santos’ accumulation of huge wealth below her father’s rule via self-dealing and profitable ventures in oil and minerals, telecommunications, actual property and banking. Since 2019, courts in Portugal, Angola and elsewhere have issued orders to freeze the previous billionaire’s property.
Dos Santos was sanctioned by U.S. authorities in 2021 for alleged corruption and the misappropriation of public funds. She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and dismissed the string of authorized actions towards her as a part of a long-running political vendetta.
Within the letter, the 4 nongovernmental organizations Mãos Livres, Omunga, Professional Bono Angola and Uyele requested why sure property had not been returned to the Angolan individuals, together with the worth of dos Santos’ majority stake in Portuguese engineering agency Efacec. Dos Santos’ shares have been nationalized by the Portuguese authorities in 2020, following the Luanda Leaks revelations, and later bought.
The NGOs mentioned, given dos Santos held her stake by way of a Maltese shell firm purchased with funds misappropriated from the state-owned Nationwide Electrical energy Distribution Firm of Angola, the proceeds of the Efacec share sale “must also profit the Angolan individuals.”
The letter included separate questions on Spanish financial institution ABANCA’s acquisition earlier this yr of its small Portuguese competitor EuroBic, through which dos Santos held a 42.5% stake. The NGOs sought clarification from Portuguese and Angolan authorities about how dos Santos obtained her stake by way of holding corporations, how a lot she acquired from its sale, the legalities of the sale, and the quantity recovered by the Angolan state. The NGOs additionally requested whether or not there have been any “ongoing investigations into the position of Portuguese consultancy corporations in facilitating alleged cash laundering schemes carried out via EuroBIC.”
The organizations’ remaining demand was for “public disclosure of all data associated to the property of Angolan residents seized and confiscated in Portugal, in addition to the up to date checklist of people who have already been returned.”
In January, Angolan prosecutors charged dos Santos with 12 crimes, accusing her of defrauding the nation of $219 million whereas she was head of the state oil firm. A London courtroom additionally ordered a freeze on as much as $733 million of her property in December 2023.
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