Angola Court Freezes Assets Held by Africa’s Richest Woman: Reports

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An Angolan court placed a freeze on assets held by Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, including stakes in wireless operator Unitel SA and lenders Banco BIC and Banco de Fomento Angola, Diario de Noticias and Lusa reported, citing a statement from the Angolan Attorney General’s office.

The court order also applies to dos Santos’s husband, Sindika Dokolo, and Mario da Silva. The Attorney General sought the order, saying the three had engaged in transactions with state-owned companies that led to Angola’s government incurring losses of $1.14 billion, according to the reports.

Isabel dos Santos said in an emailed statement on Tuesday that the judgement contains statements that are completely untrue, and that she’ll use all available instruments of Angolan and international law to fight the order.

Dos Santos, the daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos who served as Angola’s president from 1979 to 2017, wrote earlier on Twitter a “message of tranquility and confidence to my teams,” without referring directly to the court action. “The road is long, the truth will prevail,” she said.

In October, dos Santos said she did nothing wrong when she was chairwoman of state-owned oil company Sonangol and called a probe into the transfer of millions of dollars from the Luanda-based firm “political vengeance.”

(Adds statement from dos Santos in third paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Silver in New York at [email protected];Joao Lima in Lisbon at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at [email protected], Mike Cohen, Alastair Reed

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