Angola: Isabel dos Santos sister calls for return of millions ‘to solve problem’

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Angola: Isabel dos Santos sister calls for return of millions ‘to solve problem’

2:40 CAT | 26 Jan 2020

File photo: Lusa

Welwitschia ‘Tchizé’ dos Santos, a former deputy for Angola’s governing MPLA party and sister to Isabel dos Santos, has called on her to return a large sum of money to Angola “to solve the problem” of controversy over how she became rich, arguing that “Angola is everyone”.

The former deputy used the phrase “seventy-five million”, without specifying if she was talking about dollars or euros.

“As a citizen, forgetting that I am Isabel’s sister, knowing that she has assets in Angola and abroad, if I were in her place… even if the money were all lawful, the Angolan state is making it very clear that it urgently needs … Isabel to transfer some currency to Angola,” Tchizé dos Santos wrote in a post on social media.

According to Tchizé, Isabel should repay the business opportunities she benefited from in Angola and pay off her debt to Sonangol.

“Is what is at stake the debt of 75 million?” she asks in the post. “Pay it, then, if they are asking for euros and do not want kwanzas, although a state usually wants to receive [sums] in its own currency, but if you need dollars and are asking the citizen, the citizen who most benefited from business opportunities in Angola, it is time for the citizen to repay everything the state has provided her, allowing her to do great business deals and become the woman she is today… well, send money to Angola.”

In the post, Tchizé dos Santos argues that “not least in consideration for the workers [of Isabel dos Santos’ companies], she should try to negotiate a value to transfer to Angola to make new investments, even if the money is all lawful, even if the only thing at issue is the 75 million that were paid in kwanzas to Sonangol, and that Sonangol returned, and which now have to be paid again.”

The payment, she goes on, could be paid “as a demonstration of good faith… to make investment, build an Isabel dos Santos University” or a large private hospital.

Her sister, who has been named as a suspect in a criminal investigation by public prosecutors in Angola, should recognise that it is the President of the Republic who has the power, Tchizé writes. Isabel should therefore say: “besides everything I’ve ever invested and the jobs I’ve already generated, and despite all this confusion, it’s the President of the Republic who’s boss, he wants more investment, I have already shown that there is nothing illegal.'”

There is, Tchizé acknowledges “that contract from Dubai [between Sonangol and a company linked to Isabel] but that is still no proof of illicitude, unless what Mrs. Paula [Cristina Neves Oliveira, non-executive director of Portuguese telecommunications operator NOS] signed went to … Isabel dos Santos, but I think Mrs. Paula made the contract, provided the services, received the money.

“There may be a moral issue but it is not a crime,” she states, adding that her sister’s financial record “is not illicit- other than under the capital repatriation law” and so suggesting “an announcement of investment to improve living conditions, to collaborate with a government,” for example by endowing a university or a hospital.

“Let’s solve this,” she concludes. “Angola is everyone’s. We will solve the country’s problem.”

On Sunday, a consortium of journalists unveiled an investigation into Isabel dos Santos, accusing her of embezzling around €1 billion of public money and citing specific cases of alleged transfers by Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, made when the businesswoman was its president.

On Wednesday, Angola’s attorney-general announced that it had named Isabel dos Santos as a suspect in a criminal investigation and said that it would issue an international arrest warrant if it was not possible to notify her to return to the country.

Source: Lusa