23, January 2020
Angola’s ex first daughter Isabel dos Santos charged with fraud 0
Angola’s billionaire former first daughter Isabel dos Santos has been charged with money laundering and mismanagement during her stewardship of state-owned oil firm Sonangol.
Documents leaked this week alleged the daughter of ex-president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, plundered state coffers to build her fortune, estimated at $2.1 billion (1.82 billion euros).
“Isabel dos Santos is accused of mismanagement and embezzlement of funds during her tenure at Sonangol and is thus charged in the first instance with the crimes of money laundering, influence peddling, harmful management … forgery of documents, among other economic crimes,” prosecutor general Helder Pitta Gros told a news conference late Wednesday.
Investigations into Isabel dos Santos’s 18-month tenure as Sonangol head from June 2016 were opened after her successor Carlos Saturnino raised the alarm about “irregular money transfers” and other dodgy procedures.
Dubbed Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos is accused of using her father’s backing to plunder state funds from the oil-rich but poor southern African country and moving the money abroad with the help of Western firms.
She stopped living in Angola after her father, who ruled the country with an iron fist for nearly 40 years, stepped down in 2017 for his anointed successor Joao Lourenco.
Gros said dos Santos was among five suspects, all of whom were currently residing abroad. “At the moment, the concern is to notify and get them to voluntarily come to justice,” said Gros.
Source: AFP



















23, January 2020
French Cameroun: Boko Haram kills six, destroy military control posts 0
Six people were killed and two others injured in Cameroon, reportedly by Boko Haram rebels who recently led an attack in that country’s Far North region.
Security sources said that three military control posts were destroyed in various attacks over the weekend.
The rebels stormed the locality of Ganse in Kolofata in the Mayo Sava Division on Saturday night and killed six people, injured two and took away with them food, as well as other material equipment.
On Friday night, Boko Haram insurgents set ablaze three military control posts in the locality of Hidoua-Touru in the same region, reports said.
On January 13 an international Christian aid agency, reported that seven Christians were killed as gangs of about 300 Boko Haram militants invaded five Christian villages in Far North, Cameroon.
The agency said that the first attacks began late at night on 6 January, claiming the lives of two men and two children kidnapped as heavily armed militants invaded the village of Hitere, Tourou district. Hitawa village, in the same district, was also raided and looted.
In Moudokou village, Moskota district, the agency reported, three Christians were killed in a raid and a ten-year-old boy was kidnapped. Another Christian man was murdered by the Islamists in an attack on Guitsenad village.
On January 7 a seventh Christian was murdered in a Boko Haram assault on the village of Guedjelé in Koza district.
The two church buildings, which the affected communities used, were sabotaged and burnt.
On the same day, a German broadcaster reported that 30 people were killed after a bomb ripped through a crowded market on a bridge connecting the Nigerian town of Gamboru and Cameroon’s Fotokol.
Authorities said more than 35 other people, including Nigerians and Cameroonians, were injured and taken to the local hospital in the wake of the attack, which struck a crowded market on the Nigerian-Cameroonian frontier.
Militant groups have long targeted military and civilian sites in the market town and its surrounding areas.
Source: IOL