30, July 2021
Angola: Isabel dos Santos ordered to return $500 million in energy shares 0
Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s former president and Africa’s onetime richest woman, must return to Angola her shares in Portugal’s Galp energy firm worth 422 million euros ($500 million), an international arbitration court has ruled.
Dos Santos is accused of diverting billions of dollars from state companies during her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s nearly 40-year rule of the oil-rich southern African nation.
The embattled ex-first daughter, whose business assets have been frozen since 2019, was ordered by a Dutch court this week to return shares worth $500 million to Angola’s national Sonangol energy group, which she chaired until Lourenco took power.
The transaction under which Dos Santos acquired her stake in the oil and gas company Galp is “null and void”, according to a copy of the ruling seen by AFP on Friday by the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI), which is part of the International Court of Arbitration.
After paying a 15 percent deposit from the bank account of another company in the British Virgin Islands, dos Santos allegedly paid the rest of the amount in Angola’s local currency, worth little outside the country, rather than in euros as agreed on the sales contract, according to the NAI.
Santos’s six-percent stake in Galp is part of a myriad of investments in Angola and former colonial ruler Portugal, worth about $3 billion according to Forbes magazine, that have been under scrutiny.
The court’s decision — dated July 23 and first reported by Dutch media late Thursday — said that the 2006 purchase of the shares, acquired through a company owned by dos Santos’ late husband Exem Energy, was illegal.
Dos Santos had consistently denied any wrongdoing and denounced all accusations as a politically motivated witch hunt.
Exem’s lawyers intend to appeal the decision “with the competent court”.
“In this arbitral award the political narrative clearly overrides the legal analysis,” the company said in a statement emailed to AFP on Friday.
One of Sonangol’s lawyers, Yas Banifatemi, told Dutch media there was “nothing political” in the court’s decision.
“The arbitration court has judged that Isabel dos Santos enriched herself with money stolen from Angolan people,” said Banifatemi, cited in Dutch daily newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad.
‘The princess’
President Joao Lourenco has vowed to crack down on corruption since dos Santos retired in 2017, removing his predecessor’s cronies from key positions and probing the former regime for alleged graft.
He has targeted several members of the dos Santos family, including Isabel and her younger brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos, sentenced to five years in prison for diverting oil revenues last year.
Isabel is the eldest daughter of Angola’s ex-president, accused of ruling the country with an iron fist, leaving a legacy of poverty and nepotism.
The British-educated billionaire businesswoman has faced several allegations of plundering the public purse and funnelling the money abroad.
In a trove of 715,000 files released in January 2020 by the award-winning New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and dubbed the “Luanda Leaks,” dos Santos was accused of syphoning state funds from the oil-rich, but impoverished country into offshore assets.
Nicknamed “the princess” in Angola, she was accused of amassing her vast fortune thanks to the backing of her authoritarian father.
In Portugal, in addition to Galp, she has major bank stakes and has a controlling share of a Portuguese cable TV and telecom firm.
In December 2019, Angola’s prosecutors froze the bank accounts and assets owned by her and her Congolese husband Sindika Dokolo, who died last year, a move she described as a groundless political vendetta.
Dos Santos became Africa’s richest woman after Forbes magazine named her the continent’s first female billionaire in 2013. She lost that title when her assets were frozen.
Source: AFP
31, July 2021
Norbert Zongo Affair: France clears extradition of Francois Compaore, brother of Burkina Faso’s ex-president 0
France on Friday cleared the extradition of Francois Compaore, the brother of Burkina Faso’s former president, to his home country where he is wanted in connection with the murder of a prominent journalist.
The Council of State, France’s highest court for cases involving public administrations, rejected an appeal by Compaore’s lawyers against a previous ruling for his extradition, saying there were no constitutional or other grounds to overturn the decision.
Compaore is the younger brother of Blaise Compaore, who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2014 — after 27 years in power that started with a coup d’etat — and went into exile in Ivory Coast.
The murdered journalist was Norbert Zongo, director of the weekly magazine L’Independant and an investigative reporter. His charred body was found on December 13, 1998, along with three killed colleagues in a burnt-out car on a road south of the capital Ouagadougou.
The killings sparked mass protests in Burkina Faso and drew international condemnation.
Initially only one suspect, presidential guard member Marcel Kafando, was charged for the killing and later acquitted.
Zongo had been investigating the death of David Ouedraogo, Francois Compaore’s driver.
Burkina Faso closed the probe after freeing the guard member, but the judiciary reopened the case after Blaise Compaore had been deposed.
An independent investigation ordered by the subsequent government concluded that the assassination was linked to the professional activities of the journalist who had a track record of uncovering irregularities in the Compaore regime.
Six suspects, all members of the presidential guard, were identified by the independent investigators and three were charged.
‘Dignity, honour and responsibility’
The Burkina Faso judiciary suspects that Francois Compaore may have ordered the hit, although he has not so far been charged with any crime.
French police arrested him at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in October 2017 following an international arrest warrant issued by his country’s government. In 2020, Burkina Faso made a deal with France for his extradition.
Compaore’s lawyers said on Friday that their client was ready to face his country’s judiciary “with dignity, honour and responsibility”.
But they added in a statement sent to AFP that he felt the extradition was politically motivated, and that the Council had failed to take into account the risk of torture, inhumane treatment and of an unfair trial awaiting him.
“He would certainly be exposed to such risks if he were handed over to Burkina Faso,” they said.
Compaore has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in the hope of stopping the extradition, they said.
Source: AFP