What 700,000 leaked documents reveal about Africa’s richest woman

ISABEL DOS SANTOS styles herself as a visionary, an entrepreneur and a potential future president of Angola. Her vast fortune was self-made, she boasts. Running Sonangol, Angola’s state oil firm, was a “big personal sacrifice”. Many Angolans “see me as a role model”, she recently told The Economist.

Such claims have always seemed absurd. Ms dos Santos’s father is José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s former dictator, who appointed her head of Sonangol from 2016 to 2017. Now more than 700,000 documents obtained by the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, a Paris-based advocacy group, and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), show how she allegedly milked the state. On January 22nd prosecutors in Angola formally accused her of fraud and mismanagement. She denies wrongdoing.

The ICIJ found a mountain of questionable transactions. There were suspicious payments from Sonangol to companies with links to Ms dos Santos. In 2016, before she was named head of Sonangol, Wise Intelligence Solutions, owned by her and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, was given $9.3m to oversee the company’s restructuring. Wise seemed to have little relevant expertise; it hired Western firms, such as Boston Consulting and PwC, to help. They billed for much less than what Wise received....