Interpol issued a Red Notice against Angolan businesswoman Isabelle dos Santos (according to Forbes, in 2020 her fortune was estimated at $ 1.4 billion, she was considered the richest woman in Africa) with a demand to locate her and arrest her, Reuters reports. At home, dos Santos is accused of embezzlement, money laundering, and fraud.
November 18 Portuguese agency Lusa wrotethat Interpol issued an arrest warrant for dos Santos, but Reuters was told by the organization that it was a “red warning”, and source, close to her, told the Portuguese agency that she had not been notified of Interpol’s actions. Lusa pointed out that dos Santos frequents the UK, Portugal and the UAE.
A Red Alert is an INTERPOL request to law enforcement agencies around the world for the location and provisional arrest of individuals wanted for prosecution or sentencing.
Dos Santos has given at least two interviews over the past week – one to Deutsche Welle (DW, recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), and the other to CNN Portugal. DW Santos said that she is not hiding, and her “location and place of residence are known.” The ex-billionaire told CNN that she was the target of “political persecution.”
Dos Santos was born in Baku in 1973 to Angolan revolutionary and president from 1979 to 2017, Jose Eduard dos Santos, and a native of Penza, Tatyana Kukanova (now a British citizen). Dos Santos in 2020 said in a conversation with TASS that she was “Russian by birth”, and the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that she had Russian citizenship “initially”.
The investigation against Isabel dos Santos began in Angola in 2017, after the resignation of her father from office. She was accused of embezzling more than $200 million in public funds during her tenure as head of state oil company Sonangol. Later, the amount of alleged damage from the actions of dos Santos and her husband Sindikou Dokolo rose to $1 billion. In 2020, their accounts were arrested.
Some of the accusations against dos Santos are based on the Luanda Leaks, emails, contracts and memos published in 2020. In an interview with DW, the billionaire called their publication “a conspiracy against her and her family,” which was staged by the General Prosecutor’s Office of Angola and the government of the country. The ex-billionaire also denies that she built her companies with “public money”.