Angola: Tchizé dos Santos alleges high-level pressure for her to sell shares

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Angola: Tchizé dos Santos alleges high-level pressure for her to sell shares

10:00 CAT | 24 Jan 2020

File photo: Lusa

Tchizé dos Santos, sister of businesswoman Isabel dos Santos and former member of Angola’s governing MPLA party, has said that she is being pressured into selling her shares in companies in the country and claims to be the victim of attempts to silence her.

In statements sent to Lusa, Welwitschia ‘Tchizé’ dos Santos said that she had received calls from someone who identified himself as belonging to Angola’s secret services, threatening that “if she does not shut up” they will freeze all her assets in the country.

“I have been told: they will take everything from you, they will destroy your life, they will boycott you, even Banco Prestígio [will] go bankrupt,” said Tchizé, referring to an Angolan bank in which she has a major stake.

She and Isabel are daughters of José Eduardo dos Santos, who was president of Angola from 1979 to 2017.

Tchizé said that her partners in Vida TV, a television channel in which she has a stake, told her “that they are being threatened” and that “advertisers are being threatened not to advertise.” She said that she was advised to pass the shares on “to other people who want to destroy Vida TV because she is a partner.”

The businesswoman said that some people are trying to taking advantage of a political situation to try to extort assets from her and that she is not afraid to justify the origin of her money. She is, she said, ready to offer explanations to the authorities regarding her assets.

At the end of last year, Isabel dos Santos’ assets in Angola were pre-emptively seized by the Angolan courts, as part of investigations into her actions at state oil company Sonangol, where she was president from 2016 to 2017.

On Sunday, a consortium of journalists unveiled an investigation into Isabel dos Santos, accusing her of embezzling around €1 billion in public funds and citing specific transfers from Sonangol to associates of hers when she was in charge.

On Wednesday, the office of Angola’s attorney-general said that it had made Isabel a person of interest in a criminal investigation and that it might issue an international arrest warrant if it was not possible to notify her to return.

On Thursday, in statements sent to Lusa, Tchizé dos Santos said that the pressure she is under is from people who say that they are associated with the government and that it was urging them on. If that is not true, she added, “warn [the president, João Lourenço] that his name is being used by opportunistic people.”

She stressed that “to do business in Angola you do not have to be a thief and a crook; not all those who have done business are thieves.”

She would not, she said, bow to threats or coercion to get rid of assets she had fought for and invested in. However, she said that she had been “driven out” of Televisão de Angola Dois (TPA2), the second channel of Angola’s state television network, despite the fact that her company, West Side Investments, had legal contracts in place.

In the current political context, with lawsuits underway against both her sister and her brother, José Filomeno dos Santos – who is suspected of having ordered an illegal transfer from the Sovereign Fund of which he was a director – Tchizé said that her partners, “if they are not satisfied … whoever does not want me to stay will ask for a bank loan and buy” her out.

She pledged to “fight until the last” against those she said are masterminding the alleged persecution.

In January last year, Tchizé dos Santos said in an interview with Lusa that she was planning to launch a television channel to be broadcast in both Angola and Mozambique, to be called Vida TV.

In 2017, João Lourenço ordered the removal of the management of TPA2 and TPA’s international channel taken away from companies of which Tchizé is a shareholder, together with another brother of hers, José Paulino dos Santos, known as ‘Coreon Dú’.

Source: Lusa