The attorney-general’s office said that they will also “trigger the appropriate procedures”.
“The office of public prosecutions will not fail to analyse all the information that has publicly emerged and trigger the appropriate procedures in the context of its responsibilities”, ensuring that “it will follow up on any requests for international judicial cooperation that are addressed to it.”
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on 19 January released more than 715,000 files dubbed ‘Luanda Leaks’, after spending several months analysing 356 gigabytes of business data relating to Isabel dos Santos between 1980 and 2018. The data helps retrace the path that led the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, a former president of Angola, to become Africa’s richest woman.
The attorney-general’s office also states that it “is maintaining close collaboration with its Angolan counterpart, having on 26 April 2019 renewed the Additional Agreement to the Cooperation Agreement with the Attorney General’s Office Republic of Angola.”
The ICIJ, of which several media outlets form a part, including Expresso and SIC, identified more than 400 companies (and their subsidiaries) to which Isabel dos Santos has been linked in the last three decades, including 155 based in Portugal and 99 in Angola.
The information includes details, for example, of a scheme set up by Isabel dos Santos in Angolan state oil company Sonangol that allowed her to divert more than $100 million (€90 million) to Dubai without this becoming public.
They also reveal that, in less than 24 hours, Sonangol’s account at EuroBic Lisboa, a bank in which Isabel dos Santos is the main (indirect) shareholder, was emptied and left with an overdraft the day after she was dismissed from the Sonangol board.
The data points to four Portuguese nationals having been allegedly directly involved in these financial schemes: Paula Oliveira (a non-executive director of Portuguese telecommunications company Nos and director of an offshore company based in Dubai), Mário Leite da Silva (the CEO of Fidequity , a Lisbon-based company owned by Isabel dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo), Jorge Brito Pereira, (a lawyer) and Sarju Raikundalia, (chief finance officer at Sonangol).
Earlier, the Bank of Portugal said that it would “draw the appropriate consequences” from information that it had requested form EuroBic regarding transactions relating to dos Santos. Also on20 January, the bank had distanced itself from the Angolan businesswoman, declaring that it had cut all commercial relations with her.