Isabel dos Santos

Isabel dos Santos (born 20 April 1973) is an Angolan businesswoman, the eldest child of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017. Once considered Africa's richest woman according to "Forbes" magazine, with a net worth exceeding US$2 billion "Forbes", the magazine dropped her from the list in January 2021, stating that it was not possible to calculate her wealth, given the freezing of her assets in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands. Additionally, according to Forbes, she owes $340 million in debt to the Portuguese company PT Ventures.
In 2013 Forbes described how dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth came almost entirely from her family's power and connections.
The Angolan Government has, since 2018, been trying to prosecute Isabel dos Santos for past corruption crimes that may have led to Angola's ongoing recession crisis. However, she remains in exile in Portugal. On 30 December 2019, the Luanda Provincial Court ordered the freezing of dos Santos's Angolan bank accounts and the seizure of her stake in local companies, including Unitel and Banco de Fomento Angola.
She is under investigation in Portugal and has since assumed the United Arab Emirates as her official country of residence. Two weeks later, the Angolan Government announced it was preparing the legal battle for the confiscation of dos Santos's assets in Portugal, a process that is already in operation in the form of letters rogatory sent to Portugal to stop the transfer of funds from Portuguese Commercial Bank to a Russian bank.
Family and education.
Isabel dos Santos was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, the eldest daughter of Angola's former President José Eduardo dos Santos and his first wife, the Russian-born Tatiana Kukanova, whom he met while studying in the then Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Her father's parents came from São Tomé and Príncipe. She attended an all girls boarding school in Kent, Cobham Hall School, and St Paul's Girls' School in London. She studied electrical engineering at King's College in London. There she met her husband from Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), Sindika Dokolo, a son of a millionaire from Kinshasa and his Danish wife.
Career.
Starting in 1997, Isabel dos Santos entered the business world, creating companies and holdings in Angola and mostly abroad, making substantial investments in high-profile enterprises, especially in Portugal.
In the early 90s Isabel dos Santos started working as a project manager engineer for Urbana 2000, a subsidiary of Jembas Group, that had won a contract to clean and disinfect the city. Following that, she set up a trucking business. The widespread use of walkie-talkie technology paved the way for a subsequent foray into telecoms. In 1997, she started her first business, opening the Miami Beach Club, one of the first night clubs and beach restaurants on Luanda Island. 
In June 2016, she was appointed by her father as chair of Sonangol, the Angolan state oil company. The controversial appointment in the wake of similar appointments of children of the president to key posts was short-lived, as João Lourenço, the new Angolan President, fired her just two months after being sworn into office.
On 30 December 2019, the Luanda Provincial Court ordered the preventive seizure of personal bank accounts of dos Santos, her husband, Sindika Dokolo, and Mário Filipe Moreira Leite da Silva. According to the Attorney General's office, the three businesspeople entered into deals with the Angolan state through the companies Sodiam, a public diamond sales company, and Sonangol, the state oil company. With these deals, the Angolan state suffered a loss of $1.14 billion. The court produced a document showing that the assets and many others owned by dos Santos had been acquired using funds from two state-owned companies. In the meantime, the Portuguese Attorney-General's Office has revealed that an investigation has been opened into a number of operations by Isabel dos Santos, following a charge laid by Ana Gomes, a Portuguese Member of the European Parliament. Following the seizure, she has assumed the UAE as her official country of residence.
After freezing Dos Santos assets in Angola and Portugal, Forbes removed her from the list of the richest people in Africa in 2021.
Investments in Portugal.
Since 2008 dos Santos has had interests in key Portuguese sectors, such as telecommunications, media, retail, finance and the energy. In 2012 dos Santos made a series of acquisitions in ZON Multimédia, a telecommunications and media company providing mobile and fixed telephony, cable television, satellite television and internet. From an initial small stake in the company, she became the biggest shareholder, with 28.8%. The acquisitions were made via holding companies Jadeium and Kento (later Netherlands-based Unitel International Holdings BV).
Through Santoro Holding she bought a 20% stake at Banco Português de Investimento. She has other major stakes with the Angolan state oil company Sonangol through their mutual European Law holding, based in the Netherlands, named Esperanza Holding, in Portuguese Galp Energia. Dos Santos is a founding member and board member of Banco BIC Português, which recently acquired Banco Português de Negócios, a nationalized bank.
Since November 2012 dos Santos is a non-executive board member of ZON. In December 2012, dos Santos announced the invitation for a merger of ZON with Sonaecom, proved in March 2013 by the General Assembly. Eight months later, after the green light from the Competition Authority, the merger of the two companies was formalized on 27 August 2013, with the transfer to ZOPT, a special purpose vehicle created to advance the operation which became the owner of more 50% of the capital of the new group, the shares that dos Santos and Sonaecom hold on Zon and Optimus respectively. There was a capital increase of ZOPT through contribution in kind from 50 to 716 million euros, while Sonaecom subscribed 358 million shares of the company, by delivering 81.8% of its stake in Optimus. The Angolan businesswoman, on her turn, subscribed exactly the same number of shares of ZOPT, through her holdings Kento and [[Unitel (Angola)|Unitel]] International, delivering 28.8% of the stake in ZON. With this transfer of shareholdings in Optimus and Zon, Sonaecom and dos Santos became holders of over 50% stake in the merged company: Zon Optimus SGPS. On this occasion, a new strategy for the company was announced by dos Santos, with a multimarket vision. On 1 October 2013, dos Santos attended the first General Assembly of Zon Optimus. Isabel dos Santos' investments in Portugal are in listed companies, which are therefore subject to official supervision of the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM).
In November 2014, dos Santos launched a takeover bid for [[Portugal Telecom]], SGPS, S.A., valuing the firm's shares at €1.35 a share, in what was seen as a rival bid to a previous €7 billion offer from [[Altice (company)|Altice]], though the offer made by Altice is on PT Portugal, not on PT SGPS. On 1 December 2014, the Angolan businesswoman formally registered her offer at the [[Portuguese Securities Market Commission]] (Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários, CMVM, in Portuguese).
In January 2017 [[Unitel (Angola)|Unitel]], led by dos Santos, officialized the purchase of 2% of Banco Fomento de Angola (BFA) from BPI for 28 million euros and now controls 51.9% of the bank's capital. The operation was approved by sector regulators, namely the [[National Bank of Angola]] (BNA) in December 2016. In February 2017 dos Santos decides to sell her position in Banco BPI, following the takeover bid launched by [[CaixaBank]]. Dos Santos arrived in 2009, stepped out in 2017 and won more than 80 million euros: Santos' capital gain comes not only from the sale of the 18.5% holding on BPI, but also from the dividends from 2008 and 2009, worth around 12.6 million euros.
Investments in Angola.
With 51% control of Condis, dos Santos signed a joint partnership with the Portuguese [[Sonae]] group in April 2011 for the development and operation of a retail trading company in Angola. The entry in Angola by the Portuguese group led by [[Paulo de Azevedo]] was to be performed by the [[Modelo Continente|Continente (Angola)]], which planned to open the first supermarket by 2013 in Angola.
Focus on telecommunications.
She created [[Unitel (Angola)|Unitel]] in partnership with [[Portugal Telecom]], after a tender process she considered fair. Also through Unitel International Holding, a platform for Unitel investments where Portugal Telecom has no presence, she acquired the mobile operator T+, in Cape Verde and gained the license for the establishment of the second telecom operator in São Tomé and Príncipe. Under this investment dos Santos announced during a visit to São Tomé and Príncipe that Unitel will invest in education in the country to train engineers, managers and other technicians and also focus on job creation.
By 2015, dos Santos owned a share of satellite-TV operator ZAP, that had in December 2013 acquired the rights to distribute "Forbes" in a number of Portuguese speaking countries, namely Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. It had been announced that most of the content would be produced by a local team, complemented by content for the North American edition, therefore potentially allowing influence on "Forbes" content. It was initially planned that the first edition of the Portuguese language "Forbes" would be published during the second quarter of 2014.
Holdings.
Holdings of dos Santos in the recent years:
"Luanda Leaks".
On 19 January 2020 the [[International Consortium of Investigative Journalists]] (ICIJ) published a detailed report on how dos Santos amassed her wealth over the years. The report – which it called "Luanda Leaks" – provides evidence of how she "made a fortune at the expense of the Angolan people".
The night of 22 January, just days after the leaks, her personal wealth manager and private banking director Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha was found dead in the garage of his house.
External links.
[[Category:1973 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Angolan businesspeople]]
[[Category:People from Baku]]
[[Category:Children of national leaders]]
[[Category:Alumni of King's College London]]
[[Category:Female billionaires]]
[[Category:Angolan Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:20th-century Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:21st-century Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Angolan people of São Tomé and Príncipe descent]]
[[Category:Angolan people of Russian descent]]
[[Category:Angolan billionaires]]
[[Category:Angolan expatriates in Portugal]]
[[Category:Expatriates in the United Arab Emirates]]
[[Category:21st-century Angolan people]]
[[Category:20th-century Angolan people]]
[[Category:21st-century businesswomen]]