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.
[5] Additionally, according to Forbes, she owes $340 million in debt to the Portuguese company PT Ventures.
Website www.isabeldossantos.com
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.
[7][8]
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.
[9] 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.
[10]
She is under investigation in Portugal and has since assumed the
United Arab Emirates as her official country of residence.
[11][12][13] Two weeks later, the Angolan Government announced it was preparing the legal battle for the confiscation of dos Santos's assets in Portugal,
[14] 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.[
which?]
[15