Angola’s attorney general, Helder Pitta Gros, promised this Monday that the judicial process against Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, for corruption will go ahead despite the fact that the aforementioned does not give a statement, whose whereabouts are unknown to the authorities. from the African country.
“We always counted on the fact that she would have to respond to the notifications, we gave her the opportunity to respond, we did not want to rush anything (…) but after almost four years with the process stopped, stalled, then we have decided to go ahead,” the prosecutor has justified. General from Luanda.
Regarding the possibility of Dos Santos testifying, Gros explained that if she is available, “she can say the specific place where she is and thus send her a letter rogatory so that she can be heard.” “She has already passed in the Netherlands, she did not accept her, I do not know where she will have that availability,” he told the Lusa agency.
On the other hand, Gros has confirmed that an international arrest warrant was issued at the beginning of the month to try to find the whereabouts of Dos Santos, who last week said in an interview on the German channel Deutsche Welle that this legal case against her it is an “entrustment” of the Angolan State against him.
“If she has evidence and wants to defend herself, it is in the process where she must do it, she cannot do it on social networks or in the media,” stressed Gros, who has insisted that the country’s new Code of Criminal Procedure allows us to move forward with the process without the need for your declaration.
In the reports known as ‘Luanda Leaks’, it is argued that Dos Santos, who became the richest woman in Africa according to ‘Forbes’ magazine, as president of the state company Sonagol, obtained lucrative contracts from the oil industry, from diamonds and telecommunications during his father’s Presidency.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Dos Santos of having caused losses to the Angolan State worth more than 5,000 million dollars during the 38 years that his father’s government lasted. As a consequence of these investigations, his assets in Angola and Portugal have been frozen.
