UK sanctions Angola’s Isabel dos Santos and associates for ‘stealing nation’s wealth for private acquire’

The UK’s authorities has sanctioned Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos and two of her associates, whose controversial monetary dealings had been uncovered by the Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists, accusing the businesswoman of stealing her nation’s wealth for her personal profit.

In a assertion launched final week, the U.Okay.’s international secretary stated that dos Santos, the eldest daughter of Angola’s former president, “systematically abused her positions at state-run corporations to embezzle at the very least £350 million [$443 million], depriving Angola of sources and funding for much-needed improvement.”

The sanctions, which embrace asset freezes and journey bans, are a part of what the British international workplace calls its marketing campaign towards “kleptocrats” and their associates for “stealing their nations’ wealth for private acquire.” The sanctions additionally goal two of dos Santos’ “enablers,” her enterprise companions Paula Oliveira and Sarju Raikundalia.

In a word revealed on her Instagram account, the businesswoman, as soon as touted as Africa’s first feminine billionaire, known as the U.Okay. authorities’s resolution “incorrect and unjustified” and stated she’s going to enchantment.

“No courtroom has discovered me responsible of corruption or bribery,” she wrote in Portuguese. “That is one more step in Angola’s politically motivated marketing campaign of persecution towards me and my household.”

Raikundalia and Oliveira have beforehand denied wrongdoing.

In 2020, ICIJ’s Luanda Leaks investigation revealed how dos Santos and her late husband arrange entities in secrecy jurisdictions to profit from profitable offers involving Angola’s state-owned oil firm, together with state contracts for corporations linked to her in diamonds, telecommunications, banking and actual property underneath the rule of her father, José Eduardo dos Santos. ICIJ confirmed the couple on the time had owned or partly managed greater than 400 entities all over the world.

Accountants and consultants, together with Raikundalia and Oliveira, had been key to dos Santos’ monetary dealings after her father’s administration appointed her head of state-owned oil firm Sonangol in 2016, ICIJ discovered. 

Throughout her time at Sonangol, dos Santos introduced in Raikundalia, then a senior govt at PwC Angola, to be the corporate’s chief monetary officer. Oliveira, a good friend and long-time affiliate, helped her arrange Dubai-registered shell corporations used to divert thousands and thousands, paperwork reviewed by ICIJ and its media companions confirmed.

Early this yr, Angolan prosecutors charged dos Santos with embezzlement, cash laundering and different crimes, and leveled prison fees towards a few of her associates, together with Raikundalia and Oliveira, accusing them of defrauding the state throughout dos Santos’s time because the chair of Sonangol’s board.

The prosecutors allege that dos Santos and her allies brought on the state to lose about $219 million from unduly paid salaries, loss-making gross sales, tax fraud and fraudulent funds to a number of of dos Santos’ shell corporations. As the top of Sonangol, she assigned herself a month-to-month wage of $50,448 — almost $19,000 greater than her predecessors, based on the indictment.

Dos Santos is already topic to asset freezes in a number of nations, together with Portugal and the U.S. Final yr, she misplaced a authorized battle in London’s Excessive Courtroom to forestall a freeze on as much as $733 million of her belongings. In 2022, Angolan authorities requested her provisional arrest by means of the Interpol Crimson Discover system.

The U.Okay. sanctions towards dos Santos had been a part of a bundle that focused different “kleptocrats,” together with Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash, indicted by U.S. prosecutors for bribery in 2014.   In its 2020 FinCEN Recordsdata investigation, ICIJ reported that 5 international banks accredited transactions for Firtash even after U.S. authorities had compelled the banks to pay fines and pledge to work tougher to vet suspect purchasers.

“These unscrupulous people selfishly deprive their fellow residents of much-needed funding for training, healthcare and infrastructure — for their very own enrichment,” U.Okay. International Secretary David Lammy stated.

Angola is among the world’s poorest nations. Greater than half of the inhabitants lives on lower than $3.65 per day, based on the World Meals Programme.

Dos Santos at the moment resides in Dubai, the place a current investigation by ICIJ and OCCRP linked the businesswoman and her mom to a number of luxurious properties.