• WILL FITZIGIBBONTHE United States (US) last week sanctioned Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos for her involvement in significant corruption, and barred her and her immediate relatives from entering the Western superpower.
This marks the first public US response to years of accusations of wrongdoing.
Dos Santos’ business empire was the subject of the Luanda Leaks, a global exposé published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2020.
The Namibian previously reported on Dos Santos setting up a bank in Namibia, Bank BIC, and receiving approval for a banking licence, while the central bank did not have access to all information relating to the application.
US secretary of state Anthony Blinken cited Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former longtime autocratic president, José Eduardo dos Santos, “for her involvement in significant corruption by misappropriating public funds for her personal benefit”, according to a press release.
According to the sanction, which was announced on International Anti-Corruption Day, Dos Santos and her immediate family are now barred from entering the US.
“These sanctions will give many Angolans hope and pre-vent Angolan officials from using public funds for their own benefit while many still live in extreme poverty without access to clean water, education, and healthcare services,” says Florindo Chivucute, the executive director of Washington DC-based nonprofit organisation Friends of Angola, which has advocated US measures against the billionaire.
Dos Santos ran Angola’s state-owned oil company from 2016 to 2017.
She has previously denied wrongdoing, labelling accusations against her a witch-hunt.
The state department’s announcement comes almost two years after the ICIJ and a team of 120 journalists from 36 countries revealed how two decades of corrupt deals helped turn Dos Santos into Africa’s wealthiest woman, while leaving Angola one of the world’s poorest countries.
The Luanda Leaks was based on more than 715 000 documents that provide a window into the inner workings of Dos Santos’ business empire.
The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, an organisation based in Paris, France, obtained these files and shared them with the ICIJ.
After the investigation, authorities in Angola, Malta, the Netherlands, and Portugal announced a suite of lawsuits and investigations into Dos Santos and her companies, and many of her business ventures have been largely dismantled.
Dos Santos’ business dealings also featured in the ICIJ’s FinCEN Files and Pandora Papers.
She is believed to be living in the United Arab Emirates currently.
Under the announcement, the state department also imposed visa and entry bans on officials from Ukraine, Guatemala, El Salvador, Liberia, Nicaragua, Colombia, and two other high-profile Angolans.
Referring to the announced measures, Blinken said: “These complementary actions promote accountability for corrupt actors across the globe to disrupt and deter those who would seek to act with impunity, disregard international standards, and undermine democracy and the rule of law.”
* Will Fitzibbon is an investigative reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
* Additional reporting by Lazarus Amukeshe.
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