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In 2013, the Forbes magazine article said, between the complaint and the slander: “For President Dos Santos, it is an infallible way to withdraw money from his country, maintaining a supposed distance. If the 71-year-old agent leaves the government, he will be able to recover the assets that are with his daughter. In case of death, keep the treasure in the family.. If she is generous, Isabel can choose to share with her seven known half-siblings. Or not. Everyone in Angola knows that brothers despise each other ”. Forbes then transcribed an unofficial statement: “Ms. Isabel dos Santos is an independent businesswoman and private investor who represents only her own interests. Their investments in Angolan and / or Portuguese companies are transparent and were carried out through transactions carried out under competitive conditions that involve external entities, such as law firms and renowned banks ”.
After the publication of the article, a statement by Isabel dos Santos denied the accusations of illegitimate enrichment published by the North American magazine and guaranteed that “the Angolan president and government never illegally transferred company shares to Isabel dos Santos or to any company controlled by this businesswoman. ”.
Four years later, on February 26, 2007, Diário de Notícias published an article entitled “’Furacão’ picks up the daughter of the President of Angola”, with a photo of José Eduardo dos Santos accompanied by the caption: “Eduardo dos Santos. The society linked to the eldest daughter of the Angolan president appears involved in the process ”. In the text it was written: “A company created in the USA through the trust company PIC International Consultants was one of the objectives of the most recent search carried out by the Central Department of Investigation and Criminal Action (DCIAP) in the context of the ‘Operation Hurricane’. This company is in the name of Isabel dos Santos’ husband and was used by the couple to buy an apartment in Lisbon ”. It was added that all taxes related to the purchase of the apartment had been paid.
This news prompted the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation to make public on February 28, 2007 a clarification in which it stated: “The DCIAP clarifies that the news published by the media that Mrs. Isabel Santos, daughter of His Excellency the President of the Republic of Angola, is the object of suspicion or investigation in the framework of the process known as ‘Operation Hurricane’ ”. On March 1, 2007, DN published another news item titled “’Operation Furacão’ – MP confirms the connection of the Angolan RP’s daughter with offshore“, Noting that the PGR did not deny” that at the beginning of February documentation related to the establishment of a company was collected offshoreLinked to Isabel dos Santos, adding: “In the note sent to the Diário de Notícias, the Public Ministry does not clarify, then, what should be the destination of the seized documentation and why it was seized.” The lawyer himself ended up confirming to Lusa the information transmitted by the newspaper: “All taxes related to the purchase of the apartment have been paid.”
On March 16, 2007, a complaint filed by Isabel dos Santos against Diário de Notícias for this news was brought to ERC.. On August 8, 2007, ERC considered “reprehensible the performance of the newspaper, urging it to ensure in the future, in the exercise of its editorial activity, strict compliance with the applicable requirements in terms of information rigor and, as well as, strict adherence to to the standards of image and good name and reputation ”.
In mid-July 2007, Isabel dos Santos would see two profiles published. In Italy, in the newspaper La Stampa, and in Portugal, in the Saturday magazine. Both will make you react again with vehemence.
In the first, on July 15, 2007, the Italian newspaper published an investigation of journalist Giulia Vola, entitled ‘The black goddess of intrigue’ (‘A deusa negra da intrigue’), who affirmed that Isabel dos Santos would be the iron front of José Eduardo dos Santos as administrator of a large business empire, which included oil, diamonds and banking, and that these assets were the result of acts of corruption, embezzlement and favoritism while daughter of the president of Angola. He began with the description of Isabel dos Santos on the island of Luanda drinking Moët & Chandon, saying that she managed “all her Angolan heritage distributed by oil, diamonds and banks” and that these “reins of the financial empire changed for Isabel when she was still No He was thirty years old and the civil war had ended shortly before ”.
The article also referred to the alleged collusion between the Angolan political and military class and international figures of dubious reputation, including the Sicilian mobster Victor Palazzolo, a fugitive from Italian justice. According to the newspaper, “the business of Víctor Palazzolo, who also uses the name of Robert Von Palace-Kobaltschenko, will also have crossed with those of Isabel and general entrepreneurs, among others, in the diamond sector,” he wrote. Rafael Marques.
On August 3, 2007, La Stampa had to publish the correction to the article, due to the “right of reply sent by Mrs. Isabel dos Santos.”
“The information contained in the article ‘The black goddess of intrigue’, signed by Giulia Vola, published on July 15, 2007, is erroneous. Angola is a parliamentary republic and José Eduardo dos Santos is the president, not a dictator, legitimately elected in 1979 and reelected in 1992. It was through his leadership that Angola became a multi-party democracy. There is no financial empire in the hands of the president, and consequently the claim that Isabel dos Santos, the president’s daughter, ran such a financial empire is absolutely false. There is no company called Futungo and, in general, no company performs the functions assigned to it. Sonangol is a state-owned company. The National Bank of Angola is a state bank that does not carry out commercial banking operations. The claim that Isabel dos Santos, through the (non-existent) Futungo company, placed between four and eight billion dollars in external accounts is absolutely false. How false is the accusation, launched by the NGOs, that in 2001 two billion dollars would have disappeared: information denied after control of the KPMG company was determined. The Angolan president has no responsibility for the ‘Angolagate’ issue, a scandal caused by intrigues between French and Russian businessmen. Isabel dos Santos was never friends with the Russian businessman Lev Leviev. Isabel dos Santos and her family never met, much less had business relationships with the mobster Víctor Roberto Palazzolo, or with anyone related to organized crime. The oil trade is carried out through public and transparent procedures without the direct participation of the President, much less his daughter ”.
On October 2, 2007, Isabel dos Santos filed a formal complaint with the Italian consulate in Luanda against journalist Giulia Vola, against the director of the newspaper La Stampa, Giulio Anselmi, and against Luca Ciarrocca, director of the newspaper Wall Street Italia, who also published the article. In that complaint, he maintains that the text “has a highly defamatory content”: “It is detrimental to my honor and reputation, as well as to the reputation of my family and the Angolan institution.” Isabel dos Santos also repudiated the fact of being considered the administrator of an empire: “I am the daughter of President José Eduardo dos Santos and I do not manage any assets, much less a financial ’empire’ of the President, an ’empire’ that simply does not exist. . “ He also stressed that it is not “true that the subscriber has been busy with oil” and “with the supervision of his father” and that “millions of dollars disappear from the State coffers” that should have been used for “food, medicine and infrastructure ”:” Actually, in Angola, the oil trade has gone through public, transparent and controlled procedures, without the direct participation of the President of the Republic and even less of the insurer. “
Shortly after, in the edition of July 19, 2007, on Saturday he published an article entitled “The Empire of the President’s Daughter,” signed by Helena Cristina Coelho, Nuno Tiago Pinto and Ricardo Marques. On July 27, 2007, Isabel dos Santos also sent a text on the right of reply, which was published in the edition of Saturday, August 16, 2007. Two days before, on August 14, a complaint had been filed with ERC for Isabel dos Santos against the magazine. In this complaint, the Angolan said that the article was “full of inaccuracies, exaggerations and falsehoods, which denote the total absence of journalistic rigor on the part of its authors.” He spoke of “various dishonorable considerations about character and life”, as well as “totally false accusations that seriously damage his honor and consideration.”
Later, in formulating the complaint, it challenged several examples from the article, specifically the references “to the alleged influence of the target on Sonangol’s strategies, vis-à-vis BCP Millennium; the abuse, by the latter, of Angolan state resources, as the alleged representative of Sonangol; the existence of alliances between your company and BES, in Angola; the role it would play in the expatriation of family capital; your academic qualifications; the bohemian lifestyle that the plaintiff allegedly practiced and, even so, the illegalities and excesses that occurred on her birthdays and weddings ”.
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