"The companies were clients in good faith and trusted in the curriculum and professional capacity of these auditing companies and will be the first interested in the full clarification of any irregularities and will not fail to constitute assistants, if such processes exist, to watch over the defense of their rights in the face of alleged irregular practices of said auditors," reads the statement released by the lawyers of Isabel dos Santos.
Also according to the lawyers, the report of the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) released on Wednesday does not refer to illegal practices of Isabel dos Santos' companies, but "possible irregularities and illegalities practiced by the auditing companies themselves".
The CMVM released on Wednesday the highlights on supervisory activity to auditors in the 2019/2020 cycle, according to which it has instituted 10 supervisory actions to nine auditors (involving 27 audited entities and 84 audit files), following the news published by the Luanda Leaks (involving alleged financial schemes of Isabel dos Santos).
According to the document, the purpose of the supervisory actions "was to assess whether the auditors fulfilled all their duties" with regard to "the prevention and combating of money laundering and terrorist financing" and "the compliance of the work carried out with professional standards and applicable legal and regulatory provisions regarding balances and transactions with related parties".
In the statement released this Thursday, the lawyers of businesswoman Isabel dos Santos state that the CMVM report evaluates the audit companies (ROC), considering that "the companies of engineer Isabel dos Santos, as clients, have nothing to do with any irregularities that audit companies may have in their operation and that may appear in this report".
"The auditors are independent entities and obliged to the scrupulous fulfillment of the law in the works they execute, therefore the possible existence of irregularities in the works they execute naturally deserve the concern of their clients for the fear of having been prejudiced with such eventual irregular practices", they mention.
In January of this year, the president of the CMVM had told journalists that the financial markets regulator had initiated "concrete supervisory actions" within the scope of the dossier called Luanda Leaks, which detailed the financial schemes of Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, considering the information disclosed by the International Research Journalism Consortium (ICIJ) "of enormous importance to the CMVM".
