LISBON (Reuters) – Angola’s Supreme Court has ordered the “preventive” seizure of assets worth around $1 billion held by Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the southern African country’s former president, Portugal’s Lusa news agency said on Tuesday.
The court document cited by Lusa, dated Dec. 19, said authorities had evidence of alleged embezzlement and money laundering and ordered the seizure of the money dos Santos holds in “all banking institutions”.
The seizure also includes all of dos Santos’s shares in Angolan company Embalvidro, as well as 100% of shares in Cape Verde’s telecom company Unitel T+ and Unitel STP in Sao Tome e Principe, according to Lusa.
A total of 70% of her shares in Mozambique’s telecom MStar and Upstar Comunicacoes should be seized too, Lusa said.
Dos Santos has been facing corruption allegations for many years. In 2019, Angola’s Supreme Court ordered the seizure of her assets for allegedly steering state funds to companies in which she held stakes during her father’s presidency, including oil giant Sonangol.
Dos Santos’s father, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, died in July. He ruled Angola almost for four decades, until 2017.
A spokesperson from dos Santos did no immediate respond to a request to comment.
She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and told CNN Portugal in November that the courts in Angola were “not independent” and that judges there were “used to fulfil a political agenda”.
This order follows a global police agency Interpol’s red notice last month asking for dos Santos to be located and arrested provisionally.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony, Editing by Charlie Devereux, Nick Macfie).
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