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Angolan purge continues - Isabel dos Santos sacked from Sonangol

ISABELDOSSANTOSAngola's new President, João Lourenço, has removed Isabel dos Santos from the top job at the state-owned oil company, Sonangol.

Africa’s richest woman was sacked, as was her board of directors in a move that draws up the battle lines between the new premiership and Angola’s still-powerful dos Santos family whose head, José Eduardo doe Santos, ran the oil-rich African country for nearly 40 years.

Not content with firing Isabel dos Santos, Lourenço ordered the state broadcaster to sack two of dos Santos’s other children.

Lourenço replaced the 75-year-old president in September this year and pledged that he would end monopolies and fight corruption in order to repair Angola’s crisis-ridden economy.

As the dos Santos family’s influence controls many of Angola’s businesses, Lourenço is taking on the family head on with earlier sackings including the governor of the central bank, the head of the diamond company Endiama and the entire boards of the three state-run media companies.

Another of dos Santos’s children, José Filomeno, somehow ended up in charge of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund with $5 billion under mismanagement.

Isabel dos Santos, long the darling of the Lisbon stock exchange and who can do no wrong in Portugal despite obvious links to her father kleptocracy, will be replaced by Carlos Saturnino who worked at Sonangol until he was fired by the incoming Isabel in 2016.

Saturnino ended up as secretary of state for oil and was asked to review the sector. This he has done and Isabel dos Santos is out, a move that will not dent her personal multi-billion fortune but will hurt her pride.

Isabel dos Santos controls Unitel, Angola’s largest mobile-phone company, owns Candando, a supermarket chain, and has stakes in Angolan financial institutions Banco BIC and BFA. She has huge stakes in several Portuguese companies including Zon Multimedia and Galp Energía.

A Forbes magazine article described in 2013 how Isabel dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth comes almost entirely from her family's power and connections.

President Lourenço has been part of the ruling party that has overseen corruption for decades. He will know that the disruption he is causing is likely to alienate important allies as well as garnering public support.

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