Angolan Dos Santos’s Crumbling Family Business Empire

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Critics of Angola’s previous president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died Friday, accused him of stripping the place of substantially of its extensive oil wealth to enrich himself and his relatives.

Dos Santos, who stepped down in 2017 soon after 38 years of iron-fisted rule, appointed relatives customers to critical financial jobs throughout his presidency.

Banking, telecoms, media and most substantially oil had been among the industries that felt the considerably-reaching influence of the Dos Santos brood.

He “privatised the point out to gain his family members and a handful of associates,” claimed investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, who was hugely significant of Dos Santos’ alleged plunder.

Here is a critique of the principal figures in the “family small business”:

Regarded derisively as “the princess”, 49-year-old Isabel was the community face of the Dos Santos business empire.

Her father appointed her to head the condition oil large Sonangol, but she was dismissed shortly right after his  successor Joao Lourenco took office.

Isabel dos Santos described herself as an “entrepreneur” on her Twitter account and the US-based mostly Forbes magazine at the time ranked her Africa’s richest girl.

It believed her personalized fortune to be as much as $3.5-billion.

She was lively in the telecoms sector and controlled Unitel, Angola’s major mobile cell phone operator, which she give up in 2020.

She also held shares in Portuguese media huge NOS, although investing closely in the banking sector, sitting down on the boards of Banco de Fomento Angola, Banco BIC — as nicely as its Portuguese affiliate — and the market place chief BFA.

And along with her now late husband Sindika Dokolo, she owned the luxurious Swiss superstar jeweller De Grisogono, which went bust in 2020.

But that business enterprise empire has been largely dismantled because a 2020 ICIJ investigation into the shady origins of her fortune.

She is remaining probed for a extended list of crimes in Angola, like mismanagement, embezzlement and income laundering through her stewardship of the condition-operate oil big Sonangol.

She has vehemently denied the accusations from her as a politically-enthusiastic “witch-hunt”.

Final 12 months she was purchased to surrender a stake in the Portuguese power organization Galp worth an believed $500 million

In 2013, Jose Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, nicknamed Zenu, was appointed by his father to head up a sovereign prosperity fund. At 35, Filomeno was controlling the fund well worth $5 billion.

Six years later on, he was arrested for fraud, income laundering and affect peddling. He was identified responsible of seeking to embezzle up to $1.5 billion from the sovereign prosperity fund, which he oversaw from 2013 to 2018.

In 2020 he was jailed for 5 years, producing him a person of the 1st users of the previous presidential household to be prosecuted as component of an anti-graft campaign led by Lourenco due to the fact he arrived to electrical power in 2017.

Married to a Portuguese businessman, Welwitschia dos Santos was a primary figure in the Angolan media landscape.

Now in her mid 40s, she held distinctive positions at TPA, a general public broadcaster and led two tabloid-fashion print titles.

Decreased profile than her 50 percent-sister Isabel, Welwitschia — whose nickname is “Tchize” — managed a single of Angola’s foremost multimedia and promoting businesses.

She also grew to become the initial Angolan girl to lead a main soccer club immediately after she took the reins at Benfica de Luanda.

Pursuing her brother’s conviction, she accused Lourenco of unjustly targeting the dos Santos family members for political causes.

“Lourenco (is) working with the young children to damage the politically stronger father,” she explained to AFP.

Ana Paula, a previous air hostess who became Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ second wife and in accordance to the regional media was associated in several diamond miners.

According to Angola’s monthly economics journal Expensao, Ana Paula Cristovao Lemos also instantly held 5 per cent of Sol lender in addition to the 10 p.c stake she experienced in the company through her basis.