The New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday, published a trove of files that showed how Africa's richest woman syphoned hundreds of millions of dollars of public money into offshore accounts. It is the same organisation that worked with newspapers such as Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung to reveal the "Panama Papers" tax haven scandal in 2016.
Its latest series called "Luanda Leaks" zeros in on Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former Angola president Jose Eduardo dos Santos and her Congolese husband Sindika Dokolo. Dokolo and Isabel dos Santos' accounts were frozen last month by Angola's prosecutors. Santos described the act as a groundless political vendetta.
"Based on a trove of more than 715,000 files, our investigation highlights a broken international regulatory system that allows professional services firms to serve the powerful with almost no questions asked," the ICIJ wrote.
Santos, the richest woman in Africa made her fortune by exploiting her own country as she got access to lucrative deals involving land, oil, diamonds and telecoms when her father was president of Angola. Santos, who is under criminal investigations, said that the investigation is a 'witch hunt' meant to discredit her and her father.
The documents, however, show that she and her husband were allowed to buy valuable state assets in a series of suspicious deals
The ICIJ said its team of 120 reporters in 20 countries was able to trace the numerous Western financial firms, lawyers, accountants, government officials and management companies, who helped the couple hide assets from tax authorities.
Dos Santos took to Twitter to defend herself and launched a salvo of around 30 tweets in Portuguese and English accusing journalists involved in the investigation of telling "lies".
"My fortune is built on my character, my intelligence, education, capacity for work, perseverance," she wrote.
Dos Santos's lawyer dismissed the ICIJ findings as a "highly coordinated attack" orchestrated by Angola's current rulers, in a statement quoted by The Guardian newspaper.
Dos Santos, who said on Wednesday that she would consider running for president in the 2022 elections, headed Angola's national oil company Sonangol. In 2019 the Forbes magazine estimated her net worth at $2.2 billion.
Dos Santos was forced out of the oil company by her father's successor Joao Lourenco in 2017.
As per ICIJ findings, companies like PwC and Boston Consulting Group had been 'ignoring red flags' as they helped her stash away public assets.
"Regulators around the globe have virtually ignored the key role Western professionals play in maintaining an offshore industry that drives money laundering and drains trillions from public coffers," the report said.
One of the most suspicious deals was run from London through a UK subsidiary of the Angolan state oil company Sonangol, the company Dos Santos had been put in charge of in 2016, thanks to a presidential decree from her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
There are redacted letters in the documents that show how the consultants sought out ways to open non-transparent bank accounts.
Another classified document allegedly drafted by Boston Consulting in September 2015 outlined a complex scheme for the oil company to move its money offshore.
None of the companies named issued immediate statements in response to the investigation.
