Dutch court says Angola's dos Santos diverted millions

Dos Santos funnelled the cash into a firm she owned with her husband, said the finding by the Amsterdam-based Enterprise Chamber, which was dated June 15 but made public on Thursday.

It is the latest in a series of judgements against dos Santos, once Africa's richest woman.

Dos Santos is accused of syphoning billions of dollars from state companies during her father Jose Eduardo dos Santos' nearly 40-year rule. Dos Santos senior died last year in July.

"Numerous (legal) persons have cooperated in this disgraceful state of affairs, which led to... (dos Santos) fraudulently obtaining 52.6 million euros in resources," the court said in a complex judgement, which included findings by an investigator.

Dos Santos diverted the money through a dividend payment, said the Enterprise Chamber, a special part of Amsterdam's appeals court that deals with corporate matters.

"The dividend payment forms part of a pattern of action," by Exem Energy BV, a company which the judges ruled was owned by dos Santos and her late husband.

Dos Santos, 50, had consistently denied any wrongdoing and denounced all accusations as a politically motivated witch hunt.

The latest case against Angola's embattled ex-first daughter springs from an investigation ordered by the Dutch court in 2020 into the dealings of the Netherlands-based offshore company Esperaza Holdings BV.

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In 2006, Exem allegedly obtained a 40 percent share in Esperaza, while Sonangol, Angola's oil company, retained a 60 percent majority stake.

Judges said dos Santos used an agreement in the 2006 deal to justify a 52.6-million-euro dividend payout from Esperaza to Exem in mid-November 2017 -- when dos Santos got wind that she may be axed as chairwoman of Sonangol's board.

The payout needed Sonangol's shareholder approval, taken at a general meeting, but dos Santos herself in turn signed the Sonangol shareholders' resolution.

Dutch judges however said dos Santos and her associates on the Sonangol board had already been axed hours before by Angola's new President Joao Lourenco, who has promised a hard-line stance against graft.

Dos Santos and her associates then illegally backdated the Sonangol resolutions to make it appear that it was signed while they were still on the board, the judges said.

"The decisions have been deliberately backdated to conceal the fact" that they were taken while dos Santos and another board director were not authorised to act for Sonangol, the judges said.

Dos Santos, whose assets have been frozen since 2019, and several members of her family have been targeted in Lourenco's anti-graft crusade.