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Angolan Billionaire Says Anti-Corruption Drive Jeopardizes Rule of Law

Salem Solomon

   WASHINGTON - The daughter of Angola's former president said she was
   blindsided by a court decision to freeze her assets.

   "There were no communications. We never received the summons. None of
   our companies received the notification," Isabel Dos Santos told VOA in
   a Skype interview. "We were never aware that there was a process going
   on at all. So really there was no due process."

   Dos Santos is the eldest daughter of Angola's long-serving President
   Jose Eduardo Dos Santos who stepped down in 2017. She has been called
   Africa's richest woman whose net worth, according to [1]Forbes, is
   about $2.3 billion.

   She is now the target of an anti-corruption campaign led by her
   father's successor.

   Her portfolio includes a 25% stake in the Angolan mobile phone company
   Unitel, 25 % stake in Angolan bank Banco BIC SA and other interests in
   cable television, a supermarket chain and another bank and she says the
   Angolan government's actions - rather than combating corruption - are
   going to hurt thousands of people.

   Anti-corruption campaign

   Upon taking office, President Joao Lourenco, a member of the same
   political party known as the People's Movement for the Liberation of
   Angola or MPLA, pledged to root out corruption in the country.

   Last month, a court accused Isabel Dos Santos and her husband of
   causing the state to incur more than $1 billion in losses through a
   scheme that involved two state-owned companies transferring foreign
   currency abroad and never being repaid.

   But Dos Santos denies the charges and believes the move amounts to a
   politically-driven effort to target her family. While she did not
   specify the size of the assets involved, she said the freeze will
   affect thousands of employees.

   "The main reason I'm concerned is because this has a huge impact on
   many, many companies. And these are private sector companies. [These
   are] thousands of employees," she said. "These are daily operations of
   things like supermarkets that have to open every day and sell bread
   some milk; things like bank agencies that have to open every day and
   deliver cash services to our clients."

References

   1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2019/03/05/the-black-billionaires-2019/#490a5eca6795

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