An email from Isabel dos Santos’ lawyers, with a draft of the presidential decree attached.
Replying to her project coordinator on her iPhone 30 minutes after receiving news of the possible snag, dos Santos wrote: “I don’t think it’s a problem, because we’ll talk to the MoF right away.” She would help the ministry fill the multimillion-dollar hole by spearheading a consortium of local banks or identifying other sources of funds, dos Santos wrote.
Among them: Talitha Miguel, 41, a teacher and mother of four. On a Sunday afternoon in October 2019, she sat outside her shack with three friends, baking small golden brown cakes for the market amid the sound of radios blaring popular music. Flies hovered around them. Miguel said the pushed-out residents now have no running water and only sporadic electricity. The area periodically floods, and the water surges into their houses with waste from the bay.
The new administration at Sonangol brought in the same advisers who helped dos Santos land the earlier Sonangol restructuring contract: Boston Consulting, PwC and Vieira de Almeida, the Lisbon law firm. Her administration tapped Sarju Raikundalia, then a senior executive at PwC’s office in Angola, as Sonangol’s chief financial officer. As her stand-in at board meetings, she relied on her top personal financial adviser, Mário Leite da Silva, according to a government document.
She said dos Santos hired her company to oversee the Sonangol overhaul because of her experience and consulting know-how. Matter coordinated meetings, recruited and managed experts, and made presentations to Sonangol’s board, her lawyers said. Maria Sandra Lopes Julio, chief of Sonangol’s UK unit, said she was sitting in her office when Sonangol’s CFO, Raikundalia, walked in.
The Angolan news agency reported the firing on a Wednesday at 1.31 p.m. At 6:30 pm that same day, Sonangol asked its Portuguese bankers to pay $38 million to the bank account of Matter Business Solutions. The transaction details appear on a payment order shared by dos Santos with the news agency Lusa. Dos Santos said she approved the transfer order before her dismissal.
Three months later, dos Santos’ successor at Sonangol, Carlos Saturnino, held a five-hour press conference and accused her of mismanagement. He said her tenure, which lasted less than 18 months, had been marked by improper business practices — including excessive compensation, conflict of interest, tax avoidance and an excessive number of consultants.
Matter Business had been responsible for managing consultants for the Sonangol restructuring, she said, adding that she had no connection to the firm. Dos Santos said she abstained from voting on the contract “to ensure no conflict of interest.”that dos Santos “has no legal or management role in Matter whatsoever” and that she is not an owner.
, Angolan prosecutors opened a preliminary probe, and a court issued a summons for dos Santos to appear for questioning in July.Dos Santos’ entire business empire was under siege. The arbitration panel at the International Chamber of Commerce, which she co-owned with Sonangol, to pay its Portuguese shareholder, PT Ventures, more than $650 million for breach of contract. Her lawyers told ICIJ that the arbitration court found the controversial loans to her shell company caused “no damage.
After receiving detailed questions from ICIJ and its partner the BBC, accounting giant PwC said it planned to terminate its relationship with dos Santos family businesses. In voicemail messages left with an ICIJ reporter, Welwitschea dos Santos denied any financial link to Isabel or her father. She accused President Lourenço of getting her kicked out of Parliament, and she has appealed the decision. “I believe none of the sides are right,” she said.
“It’s Armageddon,” Dokolo told Radio France Internationale. “The regime claims to act in the name of the fight against corruption, but it does not attack the agents of public companies accused of embezzlement, just a family operating in the private sector,” he said.