The Angolan billionaire was a director at Unitel when it issued loans to invest in African operators
The High Court in London has ruled that Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos can be personally added to a 400 million lawsuit brought by Angolan mobile operator Unitel. The case is against dos Santos’ Netherlands-based company Unitel International Holdings (UIH), Reuters reported, but now she personally can be implicated.
Unpaid debts
Unitel sued UIH in 2020 over loans it provided in 2012 to 2013, when dos Santos was a director at Unitel. They were intended to fund the acquisition of shares by UIH in other African telecoms companies.
However, the loans were not repaid and about $395 million plus interest is outstanding, according to Unitel’s lawyers, as reported by Reuters. The High Court judge decided last week that Unitel has a “realistic prospect of success” regarding its allegations that dos Santos breached her duties as a Unitel director.
She is Africa’s first female billionaire – her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years until 2017 – and her lawyers have argued in court that UIH is unable to repay the debts because of the “unlawful seizure by the Angolan state of UIH’s assets”.
State seizure
In December 2022 Angola’s Supreme Court ordered the seizure of UIH’s stakes in mobile operators Unitel T+ (Cape Verde) and Unitel STP (Sao Tome and Principe) two months after the Angolan authorities had completed the state seizure of a 25% stake in Unitel (Angola) previously held by another dos Santos company, Vidatel, which has been frozen by a court order since December 2019.
For its part, Angola’s Supreme Court said it ordered the ‘preventive’ seizure of assets worth around $1 billion held by Isabel dos Santos in exile, as the authorities have evidence of alleged embezzlement and money laundering,
The seizure order includes money held by dos Santos in ‘all banking institutions’ alongside her 100% stakes in the two African mobile network operators.