Former billionaire Isabel dos Santos, the topic of ICIJ’s Luanda Leaks investigation, misplaced an attraction to overturn a $733 million world freeze on her belongings as a part of a lawsuit in London’s Excessive Court docket.
A choose granted the asset freeze practically a yr in the past after dos Santos was sued by Angolan telecommunications operator Unitel, over loans made whereas she was on the board of administrators to an organization she managed within the Netherlands, Unitel Worldwide Holdings.
Dos Santos, as soon as Africa’s richest girl, is the daughter of former president José Eduardo dos Santos who dominated Angola for 38 years. Luanda Leaks documented dos Santos’ accumulation of huge wealth underneath her father’s rule by means of self-dealing and profitable ventures in oil and minerals, telecommunications, actual property and banking. Since 2019, courts in Portugal, Angola and past have issued orders to freeze her belongings.
Court docket paperwork present Unitel accused dos Santos of procuring round $400 million in loans at beneath business worth from the corporate in 2012 and 2013 for UIH and her “personal private profit,” based on the BBC.
On the time, dos Santos was serving on Unitel’s board of administrators and the corporate is reportedly searching for damages of $733 million arising from choices she made whereas within the position.
In January, Angolan prosecutors charged dos Santos with 12 crimes, accusing her of inflicting state losses of round $219 million whereas she was head of state-owned oil firm Sonangol.
Although needed in Angola in reference to a number of crimes together with cash laundering, embezzlement and tax fraud, dos Santos at the moment lives publicly and lavishly in Dubai. In August, 4 Angolan advocacy teams known as on Portuguese and Angolan judicial authorities to elucidate why belongings seized in Portugal from dos Santos haven’t but been returned to Angola.
