Partly uncertain, and with an international arrest warrant, Isabel dos Santos accuses the Angolan government of "persecution" and expresses interest in the country's political future.
The interview with Isabel dos Santos in full on CNN Portugal:
Do you feel like a free woman or a prisoner?
I think these last few years, for me, have been a battle, but also a life lesson. I have learned many lessons, there have been very difficult moments, obviously from a personal point of view. Also from a professional point of view. But it's a journey, it's a journey, and I believe life has to be lived and we're here on a mission. We're here on Earth to make the world a better place. At least that's how I see it, and as long as I'm here, I feel that freedom to live.
Your space, let's just say it was all for many years. It had a base in Angola, had an interest in Portugal, had business elsewhere and this space suddenly became smaller, smaller, smaller. And the news in recent weeks is that there's an international arrest warrant. My question goes in that direction. Does that somehow turn you into a prisoner?
I think today there is a greater understanding of what is really going on and there is no doubt that we are facing a scenario of political persecution. Looking at Angola and our legal system, it is easy to understand that the Attorney General of the Republic receives orders directly from the President. That is, unlike in some countries, where a prosecutor is independent, or depends on another body.
There is no separation of powers.
No. In Angola, the prosecutor, therefore, General Pitta Grós, receives orders directly from General Lourenço, President João Lourenço. So any such order is a direct order from the president.
"This is lawfare"
He has already found the motivations for this which he describes as a political revenge, but also almost personal.
"Lawfare", which is in essence to use the law to make war or use state institutions, public, use the courts themselves and use the law to fight an opponent, an economic opponent and a political opponent. So I think the reason is fundamentally this, is that you don't want to have competition with other people who have other ideas or other voices, to enter politics in Angola and dominate the economy. I'm going to use the laws, I'm going to manipulate the legal system to cause a lot of legal problems to an opponent. A political or economic opponent, for example. And at the same time, in public opinion, I'm going to create a whole impression, a public opinion about that person using the media. So there is a lot of information that is passed on to the media, which is effectively false.
Why do you think this shows up at this specific time and didn't show up sooner? I'm talking specifically about the warrant that was issued by Interpol.
I have no knowledge of the official document. I don't know what this is about. I haven't heard it, I'm just commenting on what I've been hearing on the news and what I've been reading. And to me, what i think is that this is undoubtedly linked to the nationalization of Unitel. When we see the new law of nationalization in Angola, there is a very strange clause that says that if there is a process or an investigation, the company or the person concerned is not entitled to compensation.
Why would a successful private businesswoman go at some point to Sonangol, which was an obvious problem? Are you going there to solve the problem?
At that time, the Ministry of Finance asked one of my companies to be a consultant and signed a contract with us, a contract that was validated, including in the Court of Auditors. For us to provide a consultancy in the restructuring of the oil sector. What could be done to make it more competitive and, in particular, look at Sonangol. My team and I present this model to the Ministry of Finance, and based on that a commission, a restructuring committee for the oil sector and Sonangol. At that moment, they become aware of the work, and fortunately it is a model that was adopted and that President João Lourenço continues to adopt to this day. I'm invited by the committee because they say they need an Angolan or an Angolan who can implement that, and that there weren't many. As I had already participated and had effectively mentored this new model, they would like it to be me and my company implementing it. And that's how we're invited and we go as consultants. I am personally invited to go as a non-executive PCA at that time, and it is a very difficult time for the company. There's a lot of debt. When I arrived, I remember there was no money to pay salaries. I got a letter from the international banks charging $450 million and they gave me 45 days to pay, and there was no money. So I had to enter into negotiations with international banking to do a debt restructuring, I had to quickly enter into negotiations with the national bank to see how we could optimize somecash flow. It was important to protect jobs and wages, and protect the people who worked in the company, because I needed these people to be able to rebuild the company.
It is at this time that he also decides to call international consultants, Portuguese law firms. And that is, say, what gives rise, then, to what those who accuse it call "Luanda Leaks". Even today, he maintains the claim that what they say happened did not happen.
It is in 2015, when my company starts working with the Ministry of Finance, that these consultants start working with me. That is, we have created a core of consultants, I am the main consultant and we have a core of consultants who work with us. It works with me directly, people with whom we talk, analyzed, looked at various models, compared the model of Norway with the model of Saudi Arabia, for example, we compared it with the model of Angola. So we do this deep work, which is a new model for the industry.
But even today she is convinced that the solution she found, possibly comparable to the ones she is making of, was the best for Sonangol. I mean, hadn't it been more transparent to pay Pricewaterhouse directly? Hadn't it been more transparent to pay the VDA directly? Was it necessary to involve other entities in this maneuver?
First of all, it wasn't a maneuver. As I said from the beginning, the company was hired, it was my company. As part of this restructuring, I go to Sonangol with a very specific mandate to restructure the company. What is accused today is that these consultants did not exist and that they were not at Sonangol and did not provide services. If you read the interviews of the Attorney General of the Republic, the allegations he makes is that there were no services provided to Sonangol, and that's where it is a lie, which is serious, because there were services, services were provided. And after that it says even more: that this whole restructuring contract of Sonangol is a maneuver, it is a fiction, that there has never been any restructuring.
To be diverted 131 million dollars.
Exactly. Now I ask: was the restructuring of Sonangol a fiction? Are there any doubts in public opinion that Sonangol was bankrupt? Is there any doubt that there has been a restructuring? There isn't one. Was Sonangol bad? Were. People knew it was bad. There were reports about it, there was information about it, there was news about it. So it was, in fact, public knowledge. There were consultants. Was the knowledge public? Era. I remember at the time the news that came to the newspapers: "why did engineer Isabel dos Santos fill Sonangol with consultants?". You have to realize that Sonangol is not just a company, it's 90, and then it has an aviation company, so you have to understand airplanes. There's a hospital company, you have to understand health care, you have a furniture company, you have to understand construction. That's a lot of different companies and a lot of them are in great difficulty.
At this distance, would you rather say that when you found Sonangol in this state, that guilt had died single? Or that the person responsible for the state that Sonangol arrived in was Manuel Vicente, because, deep down, he had been the man of Sonangol for much of those years.
What I want today is the recognition by the PGR and the State, that this story of telling that there were no consultants and that were not paid is not true. And what's very boring is that it's this story that they use to then issue warrants or issue restrictive maneuvers, or even make arrests. It's with this story, not with another.
But I asked him about Manuel Vicente. You don't want to answer that.
I'm going to answer that, because that's a good question. Why was Sonangol in the state it was in when I arrived? Why, I'll try to summarize in three great lines of thought. First, because it was a company that was not competitive, that is, it was a company that had a culture of state management and a culture of public management. It wasn't designed as a company that was going to compete with others. Unlike my companies, which have always competed. For example, at ZAP I compete with DSTV, unitel competed with Angola Telecom and Movicel, in Candando I compete with Shoprite, Kero, casa dos Frescos. At the Bank I compete with Banco Económico, with Caixa. I always had companies that had to compete and the first thing I noticed is that Sonangol didn't have to compete with anyone because the rights were dealer rights, they were acquired rights. That was a competitiveness problem. The second issue is that Sonangol had many projects that were highly deficient, that lost money. So yes, I agree with you that the managements prior to mine should not have invested in deficit projects. To me it has happened to invest in projects that have not generated profit, this is not a crime, but when the project does not generate profit, it has to be reviewed and has to stop. Which they didn't do. We have the case of the Lobito Refinery, a project of almost 15 years where 1.4 billion euros were spent, and there is no refinery. There's no building, there's only earthwork.
Where did the money go?
Apparently it was for earthwork, but there is already an irresponsible and harmful management.
Can I indemnify that you are calling manuel Vicente an irresponsible manager and damaging manager or is it an abuse on my part?
Manuel Vicente did not act alone. Manuel Vicente was the PCA of Sonangol. There was a Board of Directors, so there were several directors, there were several directors. There were people with a lot of platoons. He didn't manage alone. The same way i was at Sonangol, I wasn't there alone either. As I said, it was lack of competitiveness on the one hand, projects and investments that were not profitable, and Also found bad practices.
I found contracts that might cost two or three times more than they were supposed to cost, i found directors' companies providing services at exorbitant prices. Anyway, I found a lot of things that were wrong and cut it. I lowered Sonangol's costs by 18 months by 40%. That's a lot. Obviously, people didn't like this. They have a cleaning contract that cleans all sonangol buildings for millions and millions. I come in, do a comparative study and say "no, sorry, this company can go on, but it can't be millions and millions anymore." It has to be millions and millions, minus the 40% to be at the same level as the market price.
"Luanda Leaks is a very badly told story"
When you say Luanda Leaks was a construction site, who was a construction?
From the Angolan state. President João Lourenço, specifically.
It's coming from the dome. You have no doubt about that.
No, I don't, I have proof on that today. When Luanda Leaks happens it's very strange, first because it's a very badly told story. Who reads 715,000 documents? That's impossible. And to this day no one has seen them, we have seen 140 documents on the website.
Were they forged in your vision?
When you look at the 140 documents on the website, most of these documents are completely innocuous. Journalists have a very important role and the media has become the fourth power, that we have no doubt. At the same time, it also has a responsibility that is to inform, but to inform with knowledge of what it informs. I ask: a journalist who does not speak Portuguese, who does not know Angolan laws, does not know portuguese laws, is judging?
But there were Portuguese journalists in the consortium.
Had.
And they did their job.
Well, if you tell me that a journalist can read a contract, and from a legal point of view, judge whether the contract is legal or illegal, it would be a surprise to me. Unless it was a journalist who had legal training, which I don't think was the case.
The issue of Luanda Leaks has a cascading effect, because it has an effect in Angola, then has an effect in Portugal and has an effect even in other geographies. In the Netherlands, a part in the United States.
Doing "lawfare" is not a new action. I'm not the first victim of lawfare. There are other cases too.
There are several people in the arms of justice, who use the expression "lawfare" precisely to realize that, in their vision, it is what is happening to them. We have cases like Lula in Brazil, Socrates, in Portugal.
There are several cases. Now, I ask: if the state has evidence against a citizen, why in my case, of the civil arrest in Luanda, there are eight false documents? Why does the PGR forge a passport? Do you fake emails that come from a gmail accountand consultant, a guy named Mohamed that no one knows who he is? Why is the PGR presenting as evidence a letter from the Angolan secret service witnessing a meeting at a working meeting of mine that never happened? On a date and in a place I've never been. That is, if it is a state of good faith, will you forge evidence to seather the businessman's assets?
In the Portuguese, do you think that the authorities in Lisbon acted almost out of contagion of what was happening in Angola, or here there is no bad faith and good faith?
Portugal is trying to understand whether the allegations that happened, which came out in the newspaper, are true or false. Mainly, this issue of the consultants is very interesting, because even during the investigation process, the judge of the inquiry has already confirmed that all payments have been made and all consultants have been paid and that the services have been provided, and that there was no state money or Sonangol money that has been taken for my own benefit. That's written there, the decision of the investigating judge. And it is very rare, at a stage of inquiry, that the judges are already so sure of what they are saying, because when they came into contact with the contradictory evidence, they actually saw that what I have been trying to say for a long time was true, and that what the Angolan state was saying was not. Meanwhile, Portugal has an agreement that is the Treaty of the CPLP, the Portuguese-speaking communities. In this agreement, if there is a request, and in this case non-civil, that comes on the basis of a criminal case, then Portugal has to comply with the request. And that's what happened. But, bizarrely, I don't have a criminal case in court in Angola.
So what happened?
There is a forged decision of the Judge of the Supreme Court that is sent to Portugal, and Portugal takes this forged decision and acts on this forged decision.
I don't have a home in the Algarve. I like the Algarve, but I don't have a home in the Algarve. If I had ever bought a house in the Algarve I could have on behalf of a company, perhaps for tax reasons, if I wanted to rent, but surely if I had a house in the Algarve, I would not deny having it.
"My relations in Portugal were with the entrepreneurs"
Has political power in Lisbon ever helped you?
My contacts have always been business. I have had no contacts with the Government, other than the normal licensing, when sometimes companies have to license some document and send, but that is the stuff of the companies themselves. My relationship with Portugal was always through private investments, and if these private investments were successful in the partnerships with whom I was talking at that time, with those people, or if they wanted to sell the shares to me, or if they wanted to receive an investment, they would come to a good port.
And was this pattern of behavior the same with the psd governments and the governments of the Socialist Party?
During the entire period I invested in Portugal, my relations were with Portuguese entrepreneurs.
And have you never felt from the Portuguese governments a request for help to invest in the Portuguese economy in the most complicated years, particularly in the troika years?
Specific requests, no. I had no specific request to invest in Portugal by the Government Portuguese
Not even in the case of Efacec?
In the case of Efacec, I started working in the telecommunications sector in '98 and my vision was a vision for Africa because there were very few phones at that time. In my country, above all, and on the continent in general. Since telecommunications were a boom and the market was increasingly served, I started looking from a strategic point of view, for what would be the next sector in which I wanted to invest, and it was the energy sector. I wanted to invest in the energy sector in Angola, Africa, and create a competitive company exactly in these markets. Then Efacec was an opportunity, because it was for sale. There were several buyers, there was a process, we participated in a bidding process, so we weren't the only ones. It was not direct adjustment, there were several proposals, they were being analyzed, etc. And we participated in this process, because I had an interest in acquiring an energy company with the valences that Efacec had, because it would allow us to do a lot of work in Africa in general. Not only in Angola, but on the mainland.
For the purchase of Efacec benefited from the loan of Caixa Geral, but do you think it was a clean, normal business? That is, a businessman often goes to the bank to finance himself.
I really liked what you just said, because you just confirmed that, for the Efacec business, I had access, in part, to bank financing. Unfortunately, when one hears, once again, what Angola says to Portugal, they say that the investment was made with money from the Angolan state.
Was there no endorsement from the Angolan state?
No, not at all.
The former governor of Banco de Portugal, Carlos Costa, in his book exactly called "The governor", said that at one point in his term he received a call from Prime Minister António Costa, in which António Costa interfered in his favor and the expression was this: "We can not treat the daughter of a friendly head of state badly". And then he even describes it as a very angry phone call. First of all, do you think it's possible that this happened? Second, have you ever asked António Costa for help specifically so he could interfere with the governor?
In my relations with Portugal, they were really relations with the private sector. I have no contacts or relations with ministers in Portugal or proximity to the Government. My investments were direct, private investments. I don't believe he had specific support from the Portuguese, because they were even risky investments. The LBW, when we bought it, was a bank that was bankrupt.
You're running away from the question.
I'm not going to run away from the question, I'm going to tell you the relationship I had there, because that's why I can talk about it. And the relationship I had in Portugal was not a relationship with the Government, it was effectively a relationship with the private, and the business I did. I remember the hearing I had at Banco de Portugal, which was a hearing to deal with actions related to Banco BIC. It was a short meeting and All I remember is that there was a meeting, and it was professional.
Therefore, this call to have happened was on the initiative of the Prime Minister, but there is no request from you.
I don't know if the call happened or not. I wasn't part of any call. What I can say is that, on my side, the relations I had with Portugal were always on the business side and not on the government side, nor on the state side.
And from an institutional point of view, your father never helped you?
I could have worked with my father if I had decided it many years ago in my career. If I wanted to go to politics, for example, I would have worked with my father. But I didn't want to go into politics at the time.
"They want to stop me from making a difference one day"
Do you think your future can play a political role in Angola? Do you want that?
I have no doubt that, one way or another, I will contribute to the political future of my country.
But with a leading role or a more lateral role?
I believe Angola needs a new political future. I think we have challenges today that are different. They are no longer the challenges of independence, they are no longer the challenges of the revolution. Today are the challenges of the economy, of employment, are the social challenges, of social well-being, as people live better. We have a big challenge, which is urbanization. How are we going to prepare our cities so that they can receive these millions of people who are born every year, with water, with light, and that is not just talk. Another challenge we have is food security. We produced very little and saw that at the time of covid, when container prices, logistics, skyrocketed, that prices in Angola also went up a lot. The food got very, very expensive. Therefore, the issue of food security with a population that is reaching 30 million is one of the other issues. And I believe that today the political parties that are in power or that are in opposition are not looking at these issues. There's no vision, there's no plan. For Angola today, there is no strategic plan on how to develop, how to make Angola competitive.
From what you're talking about, you think you can lead that vision and this strategic plan for a country that's very different from what it's been.
I want a different country.
Now, to get there, you have to get rid of the issues you have in your arms with justice. How do you think you're going to do that? I have in front of me a 48-year-old woman who right now saw her business empire frozen, cramped, diminished, and who is in the grip of an Interpol warrant. How are you going to get out of this maze where they put it?=================
This issue occurs in political persecution, exactly to prevent me from one day being able to make a difference in Angola. The legal issues, they themselves, if the law is complied with, have no basis. But today I live in a country where the law is not enforced. I live in an Angola that does not have a democratic rule of law. I live in an Angola that violates the Constitution, violates the rights of the citizen. So I live in a country where the law is not enforced. Our courts are not independent, our judges receive instructions. Not all, but there are some judges who are used by the system to fulfill a political agenda of political power.
And if I take what you're saying as good, what makes you think that's going to change? And how is it going to change?
I believe it's going to change, and it's going to change.
How's it going to change?
History tells us that all systems or regimes that did not understand that change was necessary, did not understand that it was necessary to meet the aspirations of the new generations, all fail.
We are people who will force a regime change.
A nova geração, que quer uma outra Angola, quer outras coisas para Angola, tem outras ambições e ambicionam ver uma Angola diferente. Eles vão fazer a mudança, sem dúvida.
Já disse que, por norma, os seus dias eram muito preenchidos, muito ocupados e eu andei a fazer algum trabalho de casa. Também sei que era assim. Como é que é hoje o seu dia a dia?
When I was at Sonangol, curiously, my days were really very busy. It was often from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. It was also a very special period in my life, because I was expecting a baby. So imagine, I had 18 months at Sonangol and for nine of those 18 months I was expecting a baby. The baby was born in July, that is, two or three more months postpartum after that. I had a period there that, physically, was very demanding and I didn't have much close to my family, I spent a lot of time. And before that, in my companies, before 2016 too, I always worked hard, because I like to be active. I'm an operational person, I like to go to the field, get my hands on the job, get to work, be there with a helmet, with my teams, work. I stayed away from my family too long to build the companies I built, to be able to reach and get where I came from, and I made many personal sacrifices. My presence, being with my children, being with my family. And today I have more time, and that's what I dedicate myself to, effectively being able to be present in their lives, being able to be more active in the education of my children, and obviously I have a challenge, and that is not little, that it is all these battles that are put to me by the Angolan state, which although I have not been in Angola for four years, he's still chasing me everywhere.
Do you feel safe in the country where we are?
I believe that in countries where the law works and the courts are fair, impartial and independent, I will always be safe. The only place where I will not be safe is effectively in Angola, where the courts are not independent and where the law is not fulfilled. But all the other countries in the world that comply with the law and in which the courts are independent, I believe that I will be in a safe condition.
"More than my father, he was the father of the nation"
Answer me how you see it, but I'd like to ask you. You went to Barcelona and you were in Barcelona in your father's last days, but you think you said goodbye to him the way you wanted?
My father, in 2018, expressed the desire to stop living in Angola and wanted to live with me and my husband. So I've been following and i've been living with my father since that time. It wasn't just the last few days in Barcelona, it's really been since then. He came to Spain, then temporarily returned to Luanda. This trip, in which he went to Luanda, was a very difficult trip for him. I wish I could stay less time. Unfortunately, the authorities in Angola somehow prevented or did not facilitate the return earlier. Finally, he came back in March and we were very happy that he could have come back. Anyway, life is sad.
But did you say goodbye to him the way you wanted, or did you end up not having that opportunity?
I've been with my father at all times. More than my father, he was undoubtedly the father of the nation and the president of the Republic. And there was a very wide debate between the family and the Angolan state itself, about what the tribute to José Eduardo Santos should have been. At the time, and to this day, I think there's been a fallout from the state side. And it was a shame, because many Angolans who could have said goodbye to him much more calmly, without being worried about who they will vote for, who they will not vote for, could have done so. They could have had time. And that time was not given to them.
Do you have Russian nationality?
I have Russian nationality, I was born in Russia. That's a public fact.
And you admit to living in Russia in the present circumstances of your private life?
I have a special affection because it's my mother's land, so it's a place where I have family, and I respect culture, history a lot. It's a country that has theater, music, ballet, it's a country with a phenomenal culture. I like the country, I think it's beautiful.
How does someone who has this personal dimension, of connection with the country, look at Russia's conflict with Ukraine and the Russian invasion?
I hope things work out.
You don't offer to say anything else.
I hope things work out. Peace is important to everyone.
CNN
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