Isabel dos Santos and Sindika Dokolo are among the confidential clients of banks that were reported to the US authorities, according to a investigation the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), of which Expresso is a member – called “FinCEN Files”. This investigation originated from an information leak involving more than 2,000 bank reports, obtained by BuzzFeed News, which show how some of the largest banks in the world were used by criminal organizations, among them JP Morgan, HSBC and Deutsche Bank.
Reports on suspicious activity were sent between 1999 and 2017 by several banks to the FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), a federal agency that is part of the U.S. Treasury Department. They reveal details regarding bank transfers of more than $ 2 billion. Considering the amount in question, 1.3 billion relate to movements associated with the American arm of Deutsche Bank and about 514 billion to JP Morgan.
The daughter of the former president of Angola is the target of two reports on suspicious activity, both dated in 2013. The first was sent to FinCEN by an employee of the department of compliance JP Morgan Chase Bank, in the USA, and the document shows how JP Morgan acted as a correspondent bank in transfers associated with the family of Isabel dos Santos and the Angolan State, despite the fact that she is not his client.
Expresso highlights a particular transfer of US $ 4 million made by her husband Sindika Dokolo – following Luanda Leaks it was possible to determine that the money is related with public money financing from the public diamond company, Sodiam, for the purchase of De Grisogono jewelery, which went bankrupt earlier this year.
The second report, also from 2013, was sent by Standard Chartered in New York to FinCEN. It does not mention Isabel dos Santos, but rather a transfer of US $ 18.7 million, dated October 2006, between Unitel, the Angolan telecommunications company from which Isabel dos Santos is a shareholder and has been president, and a BPI account in Lisbon, on behalf of a company called Vidatel Limited.
Isabel dos Santos leaves administration of Angolan operator Unitel
Of the more than 2,000 reports that are part of this information leak, Expresso identified two documents referring to transfers whose origin or destination refers to bank accounts in Portugal – one of them includes US $ 56 million associated with two transfers from a BES account offshore Madeira (the suspicions are related to a Venezuelan banking group). The newspaper also highlights 44 million dollars in transactions carried out between 2014 and 2017 that involved national institutions that functioned only as correspondents of foreign banks.
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