Isabel dos Santos’ fight to retain her position in the management of Unitel ends here. “After 20 years dedicated to the creation, development and success of Unitel, I have chosen to leave the position of member of the company’s board of directors”, declares Isabel dos Santos in a statement sent this Tuesday, August 11 to the Portuguese press agency Lusa.
The billionaire justifies this decision by the fact that he would reign in the council “A climate of permanent conflict and systematic politicization of directors […] due to relations between shareholders ”.
The leading telecoms operator in Angola, Unitel claims more than 11 million customers and more than 3,000 employees. Historically, Isabel dos Santos is one of the key figures, having co-founded the company in 1998, before opening up its capital to the State. Today, Unitel’s round table brings together three shareholders including its company Vidatel (25%), the Angolan national oil company Sonangol (50%, after the takeover of the shares of PT Ventures on January 26, 2020) and the Angolan company Geni (25%).
A company that counts in its Angolan empire
For seven years, between 2012 and 2019, Isabel dos Santos was president of the Board of Directors of Unitel and claims to have invested no less than $ 5 billion during this period. When the new board of directors was elected in March 2019 for a two-year term, the businesswoman was reappointed unanimously, but recurring disagreements among shareholders meant that all attempts to elect a new president have failed to this day.
If for the moment Isabel dos Santos remains in the round table of Unitel, her early departure seven months before the election of a new board of directors was probably not an easy decision, since Unitel is a company that matters a lot to the billionaire’s economic empire in Angola. Moreover, from the start of his setbacks with the Angolan state – which as a reminder began with his dismissal from the presidency of Sonangol in November 2017, followed by the freezing of his assets in Angola and Portugal and the revelations of the Luanda Leaks – Isabel dos Santos has very often used her function at Unitel to communicate on her investments and her involvement in the construction of the Angolan economy.
