Portugal: Isabel dos Santos warns of bank seizures impact on workers, suppliers

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Portugal: Isabel dos Santos warns of bank seizures impact on workers, suppliers

4:43 CAT | 20 Feb 2020

File photo: Lusa

Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos said on Thursday that the couurt-ordered seizure of her personal and corporate bank accounts in Portugal is preventing the payment of salaries, suppliers and taxes, warning of the consequences.

In a statement sent to Lusa, the businesswoman said that “contrary to what happened in Angola” with the seizure ordered by a court in Luanda at the end of December, in Portugal the court “seized and froze bank accounts, blocking any movement.”

The situation, the statement continues, is having consequences for the running of the companies.

“Preventing the operational and normal functioning of any organisation, particularly in full compliance with their obligations to pay employees, the Tax Authority, Social Security and suppliers, and the administrations of companies cannot be blamed for these or other criminal liabilities for failing to make such payments, since these, if they occur, are not due to their wishes, but to the freezing of bank accounts,” it reads.

For the Angolan businesswoman, the situation represents “a serious risk of value destruction for all stakeholders” of the companies in which she has an interest in Portugal.

Public prosecutors requested the seizure of bank accounts held by Isabel dos Santos “under a request for international judicial cooperation from the Angolan authorities,” the office of Portugal’s attorney-general confirmed to Lusa on 11 February.

The businesswoman is suspected of mismanagement and tax evasion in a case under investigation in Angola that relates to the transfer of several million dollars from Portugal.

In December 2019, Luanda’s Provincial Court ordered the preventive seizure of personal bank accounts held by dos Santos, her husband Sindika Dokolo, a Congo national, and Mário da Silva, a business associate who is a Portuguese national, in addition to those of nine companies in which the businesswoman holds stakes, for private deals that are alleged to have harmed the Angolan state.

In Thursday’s statement, dos Santos describes this as an “inexplicable situation” involving the “unfounded seizure of the various personal and corporate bank accounts in Portugal” that her laywers have in the meantime been attempting to have struck down, but which “in practice is preventing movements in the same in the various banks.”

In Angola, she alleges, “the seizures have not prevented the payment of salaries, suppliers, taxes and social security”, contrary to what she says is happening in Portugal.

“The companies that I own and work in Portugal are all registered in Europe and none of them are offshore, and they are duly capitalised, audited and operate under the strictest terms of the law,” she insists in the statement, adding that at the end of 2019 “none of the companies owed a euro in wages, taxes or social security.” That situation, she warned, will inevitably change.

She adds that she is doing “everything” to continue to meet her obligations to her financial partners, to employees and “even to the State where tax obligations and social contributions” are concerned.

“It is therefore of paramount importance, and in view of the above, for companies to be able to resume normal operations so that they can comply with all their obligations to all their stakeholders and workers,” the statement concludes.

Source: Lusa