Portugal Dominated Angola for Centuries. Now the Roles Are Reversed.
In a March report on money laundering and financial crimes, the United States State Department
said, “Suspect funds from Angola are used to purchase Portuguese businesses and real estate.”
Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said
that the Portuguese judicial system investigated illicit investments without political interference.
“When I see Isabel dos Santos putting money into Portugal
because she has a number of big companies in Angola,” he said, pointing to her big stake in Unitel, Angola’s biggest cellphone operator, “it is easy to justify.”
“After, you can put another question: how she was able to create this company,” Mr. Amaral added with a laugh.
Luis Míra Amaral — who until last year was chief executive of Banco Bic Portugal, a bank whose biggest shareholder is Isabel dos Santos — said
that in Angola and some other African states, the same individuals tended to be both political and business leaders.
Rui Amendoeira, a partner at Vieira de Almeida, a Lisbon law firm hired by Ms. dos Santos
to help run the oil company, said he had no comment on the case or on Ms. dos Santos.
“We had it in our heads that Angola was a poor country
that needed to be helped,” said Celso Felipe, a Portuguese journalist and author of the book “The Angolan Power in Portugal.”
“And suddenly they were able to help us and to buy things that we cannot buy,” he said.
