Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos on Monday lost an appeal to overturn an order freezing up to 580 million pounds ($778 million) of her assets as part a lawsuit at London’s High Court.<\/p>\n
Dos Santos \u2013 Africa’s first female billionaire, whose father Jose Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years until 2017 \u2013 is being sued by Angolan telecoms operator Unitel.<\/p>\n
Unitel was\u00a0granted a worldwide freezing order over dos Santos’ assets in December and the Court of Appeal on Monday rejected her appeal against that decision.<\/p>\n
Dos Santos has faced corruption accusations in Angola for years. She denies the allegations and says she is the target of a long-running political vendetta.<\/p>\n
She is being sued by Unitel over loans it made to separate Dutch company Unitel International Holdings (UIH) in 2012 and 2013, when she was a Unitel director, to fund UIH’s acquisition of shares in telecoms companies.<\/p>\n
Dos Santos owns and controls UIH, the Court of Appeal said in its ruling.<\/p>\n
Unitel and UIH are not related despite bearing the same name, and dos Santos resigned as a director of Unitel in 2020.<\/p>\n
The loans were not repaid and around 300 million pounds is outstanding, Unitel’s lawyers argued at the High Court.<\/p>\n
But dos Santos \u2013 who claims to be the victim of a “campaign of oppression” by Angola \u2013 says Unitel is itself responsible for UIH’s inability to repay the loans because of its alleged role in Angola’s unlawful seizure of UIH assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos on Monday lost an appeal to overturn an order freezing up to 580 million pounds ($778 million) of her assets as part a lawsuit at London’s High Court. Dos Santos \u2013 Africa’s first female billionaire, whose father Jose Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years until 2017 \u2013 is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1866,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[275,1860],"class_list":["post-13528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-angola","tag-isabel-dos-santos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}