Angola’s Isabel Dos Santos Says Will Cooperate With Authorities

LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Isabel dos Santos, who is accused of causing billions of dollars in losses to the Angolan government during her father’s 38-year rule, said she is available to cooperate with authorities to clear her name and find out the truth.

“What I want to resolve as quickly as possible are the attacks on my reputation and my good name,” Dos Santos said in an emailed statement on Monday. “I’m available, as I always have been, to cooperate with justice and to provide all the necessary clarifications so that the truth prevails.”
Isabel dos Santos

Dos Santos currently faces several civil and criminal cases in which the Angolan government claims more than $5 billion, Angola’s prosecutor general’s office said on May 12. The 47-year-old’s assets in Angola were frozen last year after authorities accused her of engaging in deals that caused losses to the Angolan state during the rule of her father, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, that ended in 2017.

Last week, the Portuguese government took control of Dos Santos’s 72% stake in Efacec Power Solutions SGPS SA, a producer of electrical equipment, and is currently looking for a buyer for that. The move came after Portuguese prosecutors froze Dos Santos’s accounts in the country that’s home to a sizable portion of her estimated $2.4 billion fortune, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Dos Santos, who is Africa’s richest woman, has been living outside Angola since 2018. She said it’s false that Angolan authorities are unaware of her whereabouts or unable to contact her, according to her statement on Monday. Dos Santos has denied any wrongdoing and says the allegations against her are politically motivated.

Source: Bloomberg Business News