The businesswoman and daughter of former President José Eduardo dos Santos accused Angola and Portugal of having used a counterfeit passport as proof of their assets, signed by the late kung-fu master and film actor Bruce Lee.
In a statement released, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) underlines that the seizure of assets by Isabel dos Santos in Angola was decreed as part of a precautionary measure, in a civil lawsuit currently underway in Angola.
The file contains information from the Angolan Embassy in Tokyo, noting that the said copy of passport was under investigation with the Migration and Foreigners Service (SME), precisely to assess its authenticity, says the PGR.
Isabel dos Santos claims that the State used as evidence to make the preventive seizure of assets "a grossly falsified passport, with a photograph taken from the Internet, an incorrect date of birth and the use of English words, among other signs of forgery".
The passport in question was used as evidence in court by the PGR of Angola to demonstrate that Isabel dos Santos intended to illegally export capital to Japan, according to the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos.
Isabel dos Santos speaks in a "bizarre" exchange of 'emails' about a supposed business in Japan, where a scammer posing as a Middle Eastern businessman, acting on his behalf, would have used a fake passport to engender a fraudulent business in which he says is “a rocky plot”.
For Isabel dos Santos, who denies all the charges against her, the evidence was "forged" to create before the court "a false appearance" that she was preparing to take money to Japan and hide her assets, being urgent to arrest your goods.
The PGR argues that the ‘periculum in mora’ (danger of injury to the right due to the delay in the decision) proved in the process “was not based on any identification document, but on the documents that attested the fear of dissipation of the assets”.
The Provincial Court of Luanda decreed, on 30 December last year, the preventive seizure of bank accounts and shareholdings by Isabel dos Santos, Sindika Dokolo, her husband, and Mário Filipe Moreira Leite da Silva, former President of the Council of Administration of Banco de Fomento de Angola (BFA) and manager of the businesswoman.
Isabel dos Santos complains that she is the target of a politically motivated process and recalls that Portugal is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents the country from cooperating legally with any such process.
"The Portuguese authorities must be alert to the seriousness that can constitute trusting and executing requests from the Justice of Angola without properly checking the evidence and allegations presented (...) refusing legal proceedings based on political motivations", underlines the businesswoman.
The PGR notes, however, that the request for seizure of assets in Portugal, in the light of international judicial cooperation, was based on a decision by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Angola, in a process in which no copy of passport was attached.
"We remember that the legal-procedural rules determine that incidents, such as falsehood and other procedural issues, must be raised in the respective processes", suggests the PGR.
