Angola seeks Interpol notice for Isabel dos Santos as Cyprus court keeps millions frozen

Angolan authorities have requested an Interpol red notice for the arrest of Isabel dos Santos, according to a sworn statement filed in Cyprus, where the Supreme Court has refused to lift a freeze on bank accounts they allege are connected to her.

The court dismissed an application on Monday by five holders of accounts at the Cyprus branch of FBME Bank, one individual and four companies, who had sought permission to challenge a temporary freezing order. Some of the accounts contain millions of euros.

The order was issued by the Nicosia District Court on June 16. The applicants asked the Supreme Court for leave to seek a Certiorari order quashing it, along with a suspension while that was decided.

The freeze originates in Luanda rather than Nicosia. Angolan authorities sent a request for judicial assistance to Cyprus's Ministry of Justice and Public Order on May 26, which was forwarded on June 8 to the Attorney General for execution in the part concerning the freezing of assets and illicit proceeds. The Unit for Combating Money Laundering, known by its Greek acronym MOKAS, is carrying it out.

A sworn statement by a MOKAS officer says Angolan authorities are seeking to freeze the specific accounts held at the branch, which the affidavit describes as allegedly linked to dos Santos. It states that she is allegedly implicated in numerous serious corruption, fraud and embezzlement scandals in Angola that have brought her immense wealth.

The affidavit also says Angolan authorities have reasonable suspicion that the companies holding the accounts are shell companies, and that the real beneficiaries are dos Santos, her mother and her late husband.

Her mother is Tatiana Kukanova, the Russian former wife of José Eduardo dos Santos, who governed Angola for 38 years. Her husband, the Congolese art collector and businessman Sindika Dokolo, died in a diving accident in Dubai in 2020.

Dos Santos has never been convicted of a crime. She has consistently denied wrongdoing and has described the Angolan proceedings against her as a politically motivated campaign, arguing that the case rests on fabricated evidence.

What the court actually decided

The ruling by Supreme Court judge Ioannis Ioannides did not endorse the freeze on its merits.

He rejected the applicants' argument that granting the freezing application had reversed both the evidentiary and substantive burden of proof. He also rejected their contention that the Attorney General's proceedings amounted to action against a company in liquidation, holding that the interim measure does not affect the interests of the bank or its depositors and concerns only the specific accounts the applicants hold.

The dismissal turned on where the challenge belongs. The court noted that the applicants had, and still have, the option of proceeding before the lower court, where they could potentially secure the setting aside or variation of the temporary order. It found that full and equally effective relief was available there, and that the applicants would retain a right of appeal which could be expedited if the outcome did not satisfy them.

Certiorari is an extraordinary remedy, granted where no adequate alternative exists. The court concluded that one does.

A bank that closed twelve years ago

The accounts sit inside an institution that has been winding down for more than a decade.

FBME Bank was registered in Tanzania but ran the overwhelming majority of its deposits through a branch in Cyprus. The United States Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network designated it a financial institution of primary money laundering concern in July 2014. Correspondent banks froze its dollar accounts within days, and the Central Bank of Cyprus placed the branch into resolution.

A US district court barred FBME from American operations in 2017, cutting it off from the global financial system, with roughly $2.6 billion of depositor funds caught in the process. A Cyprus administrative court ruled in February 2022 that the central bank had acted improperly. A liquidator was appointed in 2023, and the branch remains before the courts.

The wider campaign

The Cyprus proceedings form part of an asset recovery effort that has run across multiple jurisdictions since President João Lourenço succeeded dos Santos's father and began moving against the former first family.

Angolan prosecutors charged her with fraud and embezzlement in a bid to recover around $1.1 billion. Courts in Angola, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have frozen assets. London's High Court granted Unitel a worldwide freezing order over up to £580 million of her assets in December 2023, upheld by the Court of Appeal the following September. Britain sanctioned her in November 2024 under its anti-corruption regime.

She lives in Dubai.