"I will seek to restore the truth of the facts and fight through the international courts to defend my good name", can be read in a press release sent to the editors this Monday by the entrepreneur.
Isabel dos Santos reiterated in the document that the 'Luanda Leaks', a set of documents exposing the financial operations of the businesswoman, her husband and related entities and persons, is an "orchestrated political attack" to "neutralize" her.
"The allegations that are being made against me are completely unfounded," the businesswoman argued in the document, adding that "nowhere" in the documents released "has any illegal behaviour" been demonstrated, by herself or her companies.
Isabel dos Santos said she has always worked "within the law" and that all her "commercial transactions have been approved by lawyers, banks, auditors and regulators".
Throughout the press release, the businesswoman criticised the International Investigative Journalism Consortium (ICIJ), responsible for processing and disseminating the documents now known as 'Luanda Leaks', complaining of illegalities.
"More than 700,000 documents were illegally hacked from my offices seven months ago and transferred to a little-known organisation based in Paris, from where they were sent to ICIJ," according to Isabel dos Santos.
For the businesswoman, ICIJ was "months and months" examining "supposed 'evidence'", accusing the consortium of relying on "nothing more than suppositions".
"ICIJ states that the business I built and the investments I made were on behalf of the Angolans. Once again, an extremely serious allegation and yet none of the supposed 'evidence' proves this," argued the former president of the Angolan oil company Sonangol.
Isabel dos Santos claims that "at no point" did ICIJ even try to prove that its commercial efforts "were made at the expense of the Angolans".
"Instead, they focus on individual and private aspects and commercial transactions are selected and reported in a selective and biased manner in order to fit into the pre-built narrative of ICIJ, an organisation that is being used as a representative in a struggle to neutralise political opponents and alternative voices," said the document sent to the editors.
Isabel dos Santos argues that the disclosure of the documents is a "purely political" campaign against her, saying that "many people are concerned about the current Angolan government's ability to manage political priorities".
"My country, Angola, will face re-elections from the ruling party next year and this is a diversionary tactic and an attempt to neutralise different voices and other political opinions", she argues.
The businesswoman considered that "the lack of use of the law and the national constitution has weakened Angola", then referring that the country has seen "the impoverishment of a middle class that was previously growing and the destruction of the private economy with a misaligned economic policy".
Isabel dos Santos presents herself as a "private businesswoman who has spent 20 years building successful businesses, creating thousands of jobs and paying taxes to the Angolan authorities.
"Who benefits from the crime of illegally obtaining these documents?", Isabel dos Santos questioned.
On Sunday, the International Investigative Journalism Consortium (ICIJ), which includes several media outlets, released a series of reports of an investigation into Isabel dos Santo's fortune and schemes that have allowed her to withdraw money from the Angolan public purse, using tax havens.
The information gathered confirms that Matter Business Solution had as its only declared shareholder the Portuguese Paula Oliveira, friend of Isabel dos Santos and administrator of NOS, with the support of the personal lawyer of the businesswoman, the Portuguese Jorge Brito Pereira (partner of Uría Menéndez, the law firm of Proença de Carvalho), and the president of the board of directors of Efacec, Mário Leite da Silva, a Portuguese manager very close to the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos.
Over several months, Isabel dos Santos will have set up a cover-up scheme that allowed her to divert more than 100 million dollars to Dubai, for that company, one reads in the journalistic investigation.
During the investigation, more than 400 companies (and their respective subsidiaries) were identified to which Isabel dos Santos has been linked over the last three decades, including 155 Portuguese and 99 Angolan companies.
