Isabel Dos Santos: Women and Corruption.
Disclaimer: This is not to slight anyone but to honestly and methodically define a few things.
It is of no surprise to us how corruption spreads like wildfire in this modern world. Despite the nonstop, ceaseless and glamorous promises our leaders make on a day-to-day basis, the issue keeps getting worse and worse. Now the main question at hand, Is Isabel Dos Santos actually guilty of all the allegations leveled at her? Or is there a deeper politics at play here?
Isabel Dos Santos and Family
Before we dive into who this enigma of a woman is, I feel it’s important to understand a little bit of where she comes from. Isabel is the eldest daughter of the former president of Angola, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. As a matter of fact, most of the basis of her success is insinuated to be largely due to her father’s influence. I guess there’s no question of family issues or child neglect right?
Isabel Dos Santos marriage and husband
Contrary to most African belief that an overly successful woman cannot keep a home, Isabel Dos Santos has been married for eighteen years. Apart from being an Electrical Engineering graduate of a University in the United Kingdom, She’s also a proud mother of three lovely children. She got married in 2002. All of her successes were had in her husband’s house (Sindika Dokolo), If that is not exemplary, I don’t know what is.
Public knowledge has it that they met while she was still a student at the University, and may I say this, I personally love how supportive her husband is being during these times.
Who is Isabel Dos Santos?
Apart from being the eldest daughter of the ex-president of Angola, Isabel is often referred to as the richest woman in Africa. She is an Engineer, an investor, and a businesswoman but most importantly, she’s a wife, a mother, and a daughter. She was born in the year 1973, April 1st, and is 46 years old today. Her father made her the head of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil firm in June 2016. She was already a multimillionaire in her thirties.
Isabel Dos Santos House: Where does Isabel Dos Santos live?
Isabel lived in Angola throughout the period of her father’s reign and fled when the new president came into power. Right now she lives in the UK, and news has it that she plans to stay there henceforth. This leads to the question, Is she actually campaigning for the presidency, or it’s just someone feeling insecure in his seat?
How Much is Isabel Dos Santos Net Worth?
Isabel Dos Santos’s net worth is estimated to be 2.1 billion USD. Although, due to the recent freezing of her accounts and all the pressure on her from all around the world, one can’t help but wonder how all this will affect her overall bank accounts. Or Rather if it will affect it.
Allegations against Isabel
While trying to be detailed, I’ll also keep this as simple as possible so we can all be the judges here. Some of these allegations are;
1. The forceful eviction of a group of residents by seizing the land. To which she replied on twitter, “ICIJ, BBC and Guardian lied showing a misleading picture of the Marginal Corimba Project. There were NO EVICTIONS done by our companies. This is the real image that ICIJ did not want you to see: Marginal is a coastal road in the water, it’s a land reclamation project.”
Image Source: Twitter
Again She tweeted,”Be the judge! Compare the real vs. the fake @guardian @BBCAfrica @BBCPanorama @ICIJorg”
2. Signing a huge amount of money to an unknown place. BBC actually posted, “The leaked documents show that as she left Sonangol, Ms. Dos Santos approved $58m of suspicious payments to a consultancy company in Dubai called Matter Business Solutions. She says she has no financial interest in Matter, but the leaked documents reveal it was run by her business manager, and owned by a friend.”
But then again we live in a world where bathroom pictures of President Sir Donald Trump can be forged. Not trying to suggest anything, just want to ask, why exactly are all these things coming out now? I mean she has been the minister for years even after her father stepped down from his seat. As soon as a new President was elected and coincidentally the rumour of her being interested in the seat came up, evidence that was sleeping safely somewhere suddenly woke up.
3. Putting Angola in debt. Yes, deliberately causing innocent human beings to starve is punishable by death and hanging on the cross. Everyone, and I mean everyone that has dared to try this inhumane act should be locked up. I imagine more than half of the Countries of this Earth will be without leaders. Her accounts were frozen, some properties seized, and she was forced to leave her country.
Despite all these, she’s still being labeled a criminal, an unrepentant criminal. So please I just want to ask, if she comes begging, and admits to all these allegations, will she be pardoned? Thrown to jail? Forgiven? Let’s all be real here, I believe no one reading this is a baby, there are underground political wars at play here. Political battles that are simple, yet hidden in plain sight.
4. The Diamond incident. The whole summary of this story is that she indirectly duped a company.
The diamond deal gets even worse for the Angolan people. The documents reveal how Sodiam borrowed all the cash from a private bank in which Ms. Dos Santos is the biggest shareholder. Sodiam has to pay 9% interest, and the loan was guaranteed by a presidential decree from her father, so Ms. Dos Santos’s bank cannot lose out.
Bravo da Rosa, the new chief executive of Sodiam, told Panorama that the Angolan people hadn’t got a single dollar back from the deal: “In the end, when we have finished paying back this loan, Sodiam will have lost more than $200m.”
Source: BBC
Personal Review
Nonetheless, Isabel Dos Santos could be anyone’s mother, sister or friend here. Whether she did bad or she did well; whether she is a criminal or she is not a criminal, I don’t know and I can’t say. Let’s not forget that the same BBC posted and I quote, “…But when he retired as president in September 2017, her position was soon under threat, even though his hand-picked successor came from the same party. Ms. Dos Santos was sacked two months later…”.
I’m not here to pick sides, but while in the spirit of fairness and justice, try not to allow sentiments and feelings cloud your judgment. It’s very easy to get swayed by public opinions. An African proverb says, “A lie has many variations, but the truth has none.” I’ll drop my pen here.
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