The son of\u00a0Angola’s former president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, planned to siphon off $1.5bn when he ran the oil-rich country’s sovereign wealth fund, the finance ministry said.<\/p>\n
Jose Filomeno dos Santos, nicknamed “Zenu”,\u00a0is accused of\u00a0“fraud, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and associating with criminals”.<\/p>\n
The $1.5bn figure is three times the sum he was\u00a0initially accused of illegally transferring to a British bank.<\/p>\n
The finance ministry said that Filomeno dos Santos disguised the transfer as a project aimed at attracting investment in\u00a0Angola\u00a0with the help of a fake guarantee from Credit Suisse.<\/p>\n
The Swiss bank told AFP news agency that “documents had been forged” and that it had not received “any money relating to this case”.<\/p>\n
The finance ministry said $500m had been transferred to a London bank and that Angola was supposed to make two more such payments.<\/p>\n
The first transfer was blocked by UK authorities who suspected foul play.<\/p>\n
Filomeno dos Santos was appointed to head the $5bn oil-fuelled sovereign fund by his father in 2013 but was sacked by President\u00a0Joao Lourenco, who took power in January this year.<\/p>\n
Former central bank governor Valter Filipe da Silva, who has been charged alongside Filomeno dos Santos, has promised to “cooperate” with the authorities.<\/p>\n
Filomeno’s half-sister, Isabel dos Santos, was also sacked from her job as the head of state-owned oil giant Sonangol. Thought to be Africa’s richest woman, she has denied all allegations against her.<\/p>\n
Jose Eduardo dos Santos\u00a0ruled Angola for 38 years with an iron grip. During his regime, he was accused of running the country’s economy to enrich himself and those around him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The son of\u00a0Angola’s former president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, planned to siphon off $1.5bn when he ran the oil-rich country’s sovereign wealth fund, the finance ministry said. Jose Filomeno dos Santos, nicknamed “Zenu”,\u00a0is accused of\u00a0“fraud, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and associating with criminals”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}