In a Court of Appeal ruling published on Monday, a panel of three judges unanimously decided to reject the application to proceed with an appeal, in favour of the company Unitel, now controlled by the State, which had requested an order to freeze its assets.
At issue are loans made by Unitel, Angola's largest mobile telecommunications company, founded in 1998 by the daughter of former President José Eduardo dos Santos, worth 323 million euros and 43 million dollars between 2012 and 2013 to Unitel International Holdings B.V. (UIH), a holding company personally owned by Isabel dos Santos.
Unitel, of which the businesswoman was a director until 2020, started legal action against UIH in 2020 to recover the money because payments for the repayment of the loans had stopped a few months earlier, to which it associated Isabel dos Santos' name.
In December 2023, Judge Robert Bright ruled in Unitel's favor and issued a worldwide order to freeze the businesswoman's assets worth 580 million pounds (approximately 777 million dollars) to cover interest on arrears and compensation for damages, in addition to ordering the businesswoman to pay legal costs.
Isabel dos Santos has accounts and assets seized in several countries following legal proceedings in Angola and other jurisdictions.
At the time, the judge noted that Isabel dos Santos' assets were affected by freezing orders in other jurisdictions, requested by the Angolan State, by PT Ventures SGPS S.A., a Portuguese company owned by the Angolan state oil company Sonangol, and by Unitel.
Unitel is wholly owned by the State after nationalizing in 2022 the 25 percent stakes in Vidatel and 25 percent in Geni that were held by businesswoman Isabel dos Santos and general Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento "Dino".
Among the assets identified by the London Commercial Court in December 2023 were real estate in the United Kingdom, with a value of up to 33.5 million pounds (around 44 million dollars), in Monaco, worth 55 million dollars, and in Dubai, worth 40 million dollars.
The same case mentioned the existence of several bank accounts in the United Kingdom, Angola, Portugal, the British Virgin Islands and South Africa, and highlighted the value of UIH's shares in the holding company ZOPT, a shareholder in the telecommunications company NOS, frozen in favor of Unitel following a lawsuit in Portugal.
Daughter of the former president and previously considered the richest woman in Africa, Isabel dos Santos, who has lived outside Angola for several years, is accused of 12 crimes in a case involving her management of the state oil company Sonangol between 2016 and 2017.
In 2020, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism revealed more than 715,000 files, under the name Luanda Leaks, which detail alleged financial schemes by Isabel dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, who has since passed away, which allowed them to withdraw money from the Angolan public treasury through tax havens.
