Search Results for: Isabel dos Santos

Isabel dos Santos: The Fall of Africa’s Richest Woman

Just think for a minute. In a two-year span, a father gave his daughter, among several contracts, four that were worth over US $22 billion. The father is then President José Eduardo dos Santos, and the daughter is Isabel, Africa’s richest woman. These were the golden days of the presidential family’s capture of Angola. Period. In the past month, with a stroke of a pen, General João Lourenço has annulled the four egregious contracts. The former “princess” is crying foul, and is threatening to sue the Angolan state however, the state is calling out her bluff. Her fortune is about to tumble like a house of cards, just as her father’s power fell flat once he left office after 38 years. Through her father’s presidential decrees, Isabel built her fortune. Now, ironically, the man her father personally chose to replace him is first and foremost taking away the family’s fortunes […]

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Isabel dos Santos and the Right of Reply

Isabel dos Santos, self-described ‘African billionaire businesswoman’ and head of the Angolan national oil company, Sonangol, (appointed by her father, the President of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos) was clearly rattled by the report published here on Maka Angola last week, entitled ‘Sonangol’s Slush Fund Salaries’ and has sent an official response. Maka Angola is delighted to afford the Sonangol President the right of reply. Sonangol’s ‘Official Reaction’ states (without offering proof) that the report was incorrect. And yet, instead of supplying alternative data, the response serves to confirm the inside information supplied to Maka Angola. (1) Sonangol’s whistleblowers reported elevated salaries for the board. And outrageous expenses and consultancy fees for a cabal of Portuguese nationals, effected overseas to avoid paying Angolan tax. The President’s daughter confirms that fees for the board of directors were raised to keep pace with inflation – in effect at the very least a […]

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Isabel dos Santos’ Missing Declaration of Assets

On June 2, 2016 President José Eduardo dos Santos appointed his daughter Isabel dos Santos to the two most powerful roles in the state oil company, Sonangol: by decree he named her Chairman of the Board of Directors and Non-Executive Administrator. Notwithstanding the case pending before the Supreme Court to obtain an injunction to stay her appointment, Isabel – like any other administrator – is required by law to submit a declaration of income and assets to the Attorney General within 30 days of taking office. And yet a source within the Attorney General’s office tells us that five months later neither Isabel dos Santos nor any other member of the board of directors has submitted these legal requirements. Maka Angola contacted the office of the Attorney General to confirm this matter but he declined to comment. To be clear: the law which obliges Isabel dos Santos to submit a […]

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Isabel dos Santos in Sonangol: Fox Put in Charge of the Henhouse

It doesn’t get any more blatant than this.  One of Africa’s worst kleptocrats (according to Forbes Magazine and Transparency International amongst others) demonstrates his unshakeable assurance that he does not expect to be called to account. No lessons learnt here from the trial of Hissene Habre. Barely a week after reports emerged that the ‘billionaire’ daughter of Angola’s President of 37 years (and counting) only amassed her fortune in stock acquisition thanks to a nifty diversion of funds from the state-owned oil company Sonangol, who does President José Eduardo dos Santos name to head the Angolan oil giant?  None other than his favoured heiress, Isabel.   Should Angola now expect Isabel to repay Sonangol the seed money funnelled through front companies Exem Africa and Esperaza Holdings for her shares in the Portuguese oil and gas company GALP?    Or is it more likely that she will organize a massive cover […]

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Isabel dos Santos: Africa’s Richest Woman and the Lie of Her Assets

When Isabel dos Santos sits down to count her billions, as Africa’s richest woman, much of that fortune is in stocks and shares which she counts as her own. Forbes estimates her wealth at US $3.3 billion. The reality, however, is that a large proportion (almost two thirds of her fortune) estimated at 1.6 billion Euros (US $1.8 billion) according to the Diário Economico’s calculations, corresponds to stocks in the Portuguese oil and gas company, Galp, which legally belong to the Angolan National Oil Company, Sonangol. President José Eduardo dos Santos’s daughter told the Wall Street Journal last February: “I’m not financed by any state money or any public funds.” She insisted “I don’t do that.” Ever since the announcement that she had become a billionaire, Isabel has done her utmost to justify her fortune as “clean”, the result of entrepreneurial expertise which began with her selling eggs at the […]

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Isabel dos Santos, the Princess-President?

I have never been taken in with fables. One such fairytale it that the current vice-president of Angola, Manuel Vicente, would succeed President José Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power for 36 years. I always believed that the power would be eventually transferred to the son-prince José Filomeno dos Santos, whom the father appointed as head of Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. What did I see recently? The daughter-princess Isabel dos Santos was posing next to Nicki Minaj the US rapper of Anaconda fame. What business does this billionaire egg vendor, as Isabel once claimed to have been, have to do there? This is a kind of exposure that does not benefit her image as a manager or businesswoman. In any case, President Dos Santos recently appointed his billionaire daughter to lead the Luanda Metropolitan Master Plan, to revamp the capital city. The father gave a seat to the […]

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Princess Isabel dos Santos and the Looting of Angola

Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos recently gave an interview to the BBC to talk about some of the challenges Angolans face. The Princess, as she as referred to in Angola, is one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the world, according to BBC. She said one of the main challenges that Angola faces is educating its people. President José Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter came across as being quite well-informed and pleasant: the beautiful face of the dictatorship. I do not doubt Isabel’s intelligence; however, I am not taken in for minute with this fairytale they are trying to impose on us. What is behind the success of this daughter of Angola’s almost life-President? There is this myth that her fortune can be traced to when, as a a six-year old child, she started selling eggs. The business, goes the myth, apparently grew from there. During a case in […]

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Billionaire Isabel dos Santos and Money Laundering Schemes

They may have trampled on international laws and guidelines, yet the authorities continue to apply the old maxim that the law only applies to enemies. First, the facts: In June 2015 it was announced that Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the president of Angola with A fortune of unknown origin, would buy Efacec, a leading Portuguese engineering company . The purchase price would be € 200 million. Also in June 2015, reports were circulated that Efacec, after the purchase, would become the supplier of electrical equipment for three dams under construction in Angola, namely Cambambe and Lauca. The purchase made by the new star of the jet set of the Côte d’Azur would be made by a front company: a company that exists as a legal entity solely to do business on behalf of others. The front company set up for the purchase of Efacec is named Winterfell Industries. By […]

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Isabel dos Santos’ Campaign, her Father, George Soros and Me

Isabel dos Santos Portuguese communication consultants, led by Luís Paixão Martins, have for several months been trying to wage a campaign against the author of this article. They have presented no evidence to disprove what I have revealed about the president’s daughter business dealings, particularly acts of corruption by her father. Attempted defamation   Instead, so desperate are they to find a way of attacking me, the author of Maka Angola,  that they have tried to find impropriety in his former links to the NY-based Open Society Institute (OSI), funded by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The same ruse has already been attempted without success by the Angolan regime’s own propaganda machine. Nevertheless, the deviousness with which the Portuguese public relations consultant took up this theme is in itself revealing, though more for the crass propaganda campaign than by its content. At the same time, the scheme offers an opportunity […]

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Mosquito: Isabel dos Santos’ Proxy

África Monitor reported in its March 4 edition on two investments made recently in Portugal by the Angolan businessman António Mosquito: investments that were shown to be initiatives of Isabel dos Santos.   According to the publication, Isabel dos Santos chose “not to reveal her self” as the buyer of the purchase of 66.7 percent of the construction company Soares da Costa and of 27.5 percent of Controlinveste, a media conglomerate that owns the daily paper Diário de Notícias and the radio station TSF.   António Mosquito became chairman of Soares da Costa, and through his Grupo António Mosquito (GAM) invested €70 million (US$ 96.1 million) in the business.   Regarding the Controlinveste deal there is no information available about the size of the Angolan investment, which was made alongside an investment by Luís Montez, the son-in-law of the Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva.   The report by journalist Xavier […]

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