Panorama 2020 E02
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Tonight on Panorama, we expose the billionaire who corruptly exploited her own country.
00:10She ruled supreme in grabbing whatever she wanted in this country.
00:16Leaked documents reveal how a president's daughter made billions.
00:22This is a classic example of corruption.
00:25Somebody being able to use that relationship to benefit themselves.
00:30Isabel dos Santos lives the high life from her London home.
00:38But we find the people left in squalor so she could make money.
00:44And we reveal the UK deal that could bring her down.
00:54Looks simply like a massive transfer of money into a company that is run by
01:00a close personal friend and associate of Isabel dos Santos'.
01:14She's Africa's richest woman.
01:27Isabel dos Santos has billions.
01:30A yacht and celebrity friends.
01:38But she calls England her home.
01:41These are two of her London properties.
01:45They're worth millions.
01:50Isabel dos Santos says she's earned everything she's got.
01:55I think that Angola is merit driven.
01:57So whatever I've achieved there, I think it has been through merit.
02:00I have also started working a very long time ago.
02:09But it's not on merit.
02:13Her fortune is down to her dad.
02:19President Eduardo dos Santos ruled Angola for 38 years.
02:25The country's got vast natural resources.
02:28But much of its wealth has been lost to corruption.
02:34A lot of the people around Eduardo dos Santos have become immensely rich.
02:39Family members, generals, senior politicians,
02:43people who run the oil industry.
02:46They have all used those positions for massive self-enrichment
02:51at the cost of the ordinary Angolan.
03:00Eduardo dos Santos used land, oil, telecoms,
03:04even diamonds to build her fortune.
03:08She's now under investigation in Angola.
03:11And we're going to show you why.
03:15More than 700,000 documents from her business empire have been leaked.
03:26The documents expose how Isabel dos Santos made her fortune
03:31and who helped her.
03:34It is like a guidebook on how to exploit a country.
03:45Land can make you very rich, especially if your father's the president.
03:53We found evidence that Isabel dos Santos was handed
03:57multi-million dollars worth of land.
04:01And that's a lot of money.
04:06We found evidence that Isabel dos Santos was handed
04:10multi-million dollar deals by her dad.
04:17This is the outskirts of the Angolan capital, Luanda.
04:23Disease and death stalk these pathways.
04:31The people here live next to an open sewer.
04:40This is very upsetting. It is revolting.
04:44It smells, the water is filthy, and it is right next door
04:47to where these people were forced to live.
04:50And as the tide rises, the water just moves in
04:54to where people are living their lives.
04:57Imagine living here.
05:09When we are eating, the flies come out of the sewer
05:13and come in here for the food.
05:16We have outbreaks of diarrhea, vomiting and other diseases like malaria.
05:20We live very poorly here.
05:28But this community of about 500 families
05:32hasn't always lived like this.
05:36They had to move after their land was marked for major development.
05:44These people used to live in a fishing village on that land over there,
05:48but they were removed by the police,
05:51and they had to build a new home here.
05:56Our documents show Isabel de Santos's company
06:00got involved in the development plans in 2012.
06:04Her construction companies stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars.
06:09Her plan was approved by her father, the president.
06:19Two weeks later, Isabel de Santos's company
06:24Two weeks later, the families were forcibly evicted from their homes.
06:37If the government or someone in good faith
06:41who saw how we are living here,
06:44we would be very grateful,
06:47because our living here is not good.
06:50It is not at all acceptable.
07:05Isabel de Santos's lawyers say no monies were ever paid
07:09because the project was cancelled,
07:12and there were never any evictions
07:15because all works were to be done
07:18before the government reclaimed land from the sea.
07:25But we've been told her companies were paid millions,
07:29and these plans clearly show
07:32the development would have covered the island
07:35where the evicted families used to live.
07:48And they're not the only people who have lost their homes in Luanda.
07:52This is where Isabel de Santos lived
07:55when she was a child in the presidential compound,
07:58surrounded by party loyalists, her dad in charge of the country.
08:02And then she grew up and she came up with a plan
08:05to redevelop this area and make herself a lot of money.
08:12We've discovered her company bought a square kilometre
08:16of that prime beachfront land from the government.
08:22It was made possible after a presidential decree from her dad.
08:28The land was valued at almost 16 billion kwanzas,
08:33or $96 million.
08:36But our documents show her company only paid 5% of that
08:41in return for investing the rest in the project.
08:47I think that she got the opportunity to become rich
08:55and take the opportunity that his father, by decree,
08:59would transfer state assets, state monies to her.
09:10The architects named this area Millionaires' Alley.
09:14All of these plots were to be luxury villas.
09:17And the people who lived here, they were all cleared away.
09:27We've tracked down some of the people who were moved out
09:31to make way for Isabel de Santos' development.
09:37They've been shifted to an isolated housing development
09:4130 miles from Luanda.
09:45Teresa Vissarpa lost her business
09:48but hopes Isabel de Santos still might help.
09:54I only ask God to make her think a little more about our situation.
09:59Maybe she doesn't even know, but we are suffering.
10:08But Angola is not a free country.
10:12Filming and asking questions attracts the militia.
10:26A guy from the army turned up.
10:28He wasn't happy that we were filming and he asked us to leave.
10:31Now, it's worth saying that the residents that we went there to meet
10:35were very unhappy that we were being forced out.
10:39They said it was like living in a prison,
10:41that they weren't able to express themselves.
10:43But this guy from the army, he was very forceful,
10:46was starting to make threats.
10:48We had no choice, we had to go.
10:56Angola has vast reserves of oil.
11:00But some of that wealth has ended up with the president's daughter
11:04and we will show you how.
11:11Sonangol is the state oil company.
11:14But Isabel de Santos has used it to make a personal fortune.
11:22Sonangol is the state oil company.
11:26Sonangol is the lifeblood, the lifeline of Angola.
11:31Over 90% of Angola's exports come from oil, Sonangol.
11:37So it's essentially the heart that pumps blood to our vessels.
11:48Rafael Marquez is a campaigning journalist
11:51who's been exposing corruption in Angola for decades.
11:57Essentially, the way Isabel de Santos built her fortune
12:04was by using her father's position.
12:10And by using also Sonangol as her cash cow and private bank.
12:19And private bank to finance her activities.
12:26One extraordinary scheme made her hundreds of millions.
12:31Sonangol gave her a very good deal on a very valuable asset.
12:37Angola's state oil company agreed to sell 40% of its stake
12:42in a lucrative Portuguese energy company called Galp.
12:49The price for the Galp share was 75 million euros.
12:57But like the land, that's not what Isabel de Santos handed over.
13:08Our documents have never been published before
13:11and they show she only had to pay 15% of the price up front.
13:19The remaining 85%, or 63 million euros, was deferred
13:25and turned into a loan from the state oil company.
13:33The investment was incredibly profitable
13:37and her bargain buy is now worth three quarters of a billion euros.
13:43The idea that the daughter of the president of Angola
13:47should benefit from the profits of the state oil company
13:51is clearly distasteful.
13:53Did she get access to buying that company because of who she was?
13:58That's absolutely the definition of corruption.
14:01She was put in a favoured position
14:03because she was the daughter of the president.
14:07Isabel de Santos didn't respond to Panorama's interview request
14:12but did agree to talk to other media outlets,
14:15including colleagues from BBC News.
14:21She says she initiated the energy deal
14:24which made Sonungol money as well.
14:27There's absolutely no wrongdoing in any of those transactions, OK?
14:33This investment is the investment that in history
14:37has generated the most benefit for the national oil company
14:41and all the contracts that were drafted are perfectly legal contracts.
14:45There are no wrongdoings.
14:50It might sound plausible
14:52but Isabel de Santos was benefiting from state funds.
14:58And it gets worse.
15:01Years later, her father issued a presidential decree
15:05that put her in charge of the struggling state oil company.
15:09Because of her dad,
15:11she was now in control of her own debt and Angola's oil wealth.
15:16It is a blatant and a brazen move
15:21using his almost total political power
15:27to benefit himself and his family.
15:31It wasn't my father, it was the government,
15:33but anyway, we can go through that.
15:35I worked for them as a consultant.
15:37Then, after I finished my consultancy work,
15:40invited me and said,
15:42would I consider the position to become Sonungol's chairperson?
15:49But she got the job and made a fortune thanks to her dad.
15:54Diamonds are Angola's second great resource.
15:59And thanks to her family connections, Isabel de Santos got a stake.
16:05We have found the family had control of both the supply
16:09and the sale of diamonds.
16:12The president gave her husband a large sum of money
16:16to support the family's business.
16:19But the family had to pay a huge sum of money
16:22to keep the family afloat.
16:25The family had to pay a huge sum of money
16:28to keep the family afloat.
16:32The president gave her husband the right to buy raw diamonds.
16:37The new Angolan government says they were sold on the cheap.
16:41We've been told the state may have lost up to nearly a billion dollars.
16:48Looking at the model of what they did in the diamond industry
16:51makes me incredibly angry.
16:53And it seemed to me that the de Santos family decided
16:57not only because of the number of diamonds Angola finds every year,
17:04but also because of the opaqueness of the global trade in diamonds,
17:08that this is somewhere where they could make unbelievably large profits.
17:18In 2012, the Angolan state also paid for the de Santos family
17:23to buy a stake in the luxury Swiss jeweller De Grisigono.
17:30It was supposed to be a 50-50 deal
17:33between Isabel de Santos's husband, Sindica Docolo,
17:37and the state of Angola.
17:39Not really.
17:4118 months later, the state diamond company Sodium
17:44had put in $79 million.
17:48His company, Melbourne, put in just four.
17:52And even that was funded by the state.
17:55He was awarded a €5 million success fee for brokering the deal.
18:03From the time that Sodium signed up, the state hasn't made a single dollar.
18:16Sindica Docolo did put some money in later.
18:20His lawyers say it was $115 million,
18:24and that the project was his idea.
18:29They say he paid above market rate for the raw diamonds.
18:34Isabel de Santos says it's nothing to do with her.
18:39I'm not a shareholder in De Grisigono,
18:41so any matters on that I will not be able to answer,
18:43simply by the simple fact that I'm not a shareholder.
18:45But you got half. You and your husband got half.
18:47Which company?
18:49I've just told you I'm not a shareholder.
18:51I didn't get any half of anything.
18:55But once again, the documents suggest she was involved.
19:00This bank account application lists her as an economic beneficiary.
19:06And this one shows she had a stake in De Grisigono.
19:15In the end, when we've finished,
19:17sodium will have lost more than $200 million.
19:27And some of that Angolan state money
19:30was used to pay for De Grisigono's lavish parties.
19:37Let us imagine that the amount of money that Isabel has now
19:43were invested publicly in good schools,
19:48in the public hospitals and health centres.
19:54Probably the opportunities of millions of Angolans
19:58would be different.
20:01Use a mobile phone in Angola
20:04and you're probably adding to Isabel de Santos's fortune.
20:12Angola's main telecoms company is called Unitel.
20:16They have at least 10 million mobile phone customers.
20:20Unitel is the largest telecoms company in the world.
20:25At least 10 million mobile phone customers.
20:29Unitel is a private company,
20:32granted its telecoms licence by Isabel de Santos's father.
20:37She bought a 25% stake from a high-ranking government official.
20:44It's now worth a billion dollars
20:47and she's already had a billion dollars in dividends.
20:56But the documents show she got even more cash
21:00through loans from Unitel.
21:04They went to a new company she set up,
21:07called Unitel International Holdings.
21:12But the name was misleading
21:14because Isabel de Santos owned it outright.
21:20That's how it happened.
21:23That's another trick.
21:25So people thought it was Unitel Angola,
21:29but in fact it was Unitel International.
21:32And that company only belonged to her.
21:38It looks like corruption.
21:41Isabel de Santos's lawyers say the loans protected Unitel
21:45from currency fluctuations.
21:48It's not corruption.
21:51That's not true.
21:53This loan has both director's approvals and shareholders' approval
21:57and it's a loan that will generate
21:59and has generated benefit for Unitel and not at all losses.
22:07But our documents reveal she signed off on the loans
22:11as both borrower and lender.
22:14She lent 350 million euros
22:19to herself.
22:21It is a blatant conflict of interest.
22:33Now, most of the companies involved in the dodgy deals
22:37were overseen by Britain's biggest accountancy firm, PwC,
22:41and they failed to stop them.
22:44PwC's involvement gave legitimacy to the corrupt billionaire.
22:51PwC, if not facilitating the corruption,
22:54then are providing a veneer of respectability
22:57that makes what's happening acceptable
23:00or more acceptable than it might otherwise be.
23:07After we put our allegations to them,
23:09PwC was forced to make a statement
23:11After we put our allegations to them,
23:13PwC announced a thorough inquiry.
23:18It's taken action to terminate any ongoing work
23:22for entities controlled by members of the de Santos family.
23:29It took them long enough.
23:34Over 20 years,
23:36PwC has earned millions of dollars in fees
23:39from the family's empire.
23:53Right now, allegations of corruption surround Isabel de Santos.
24:05Everything started to change for her
24:07when her father retired as president in 2017.
24:16She was sacked from the state oil company Sonangol within weeks.
24:22But the documents show that she left $58 million left as well.
24:28APPLAUSE
24:37It was all signed off through Sonangol's office here in central London.
24:45In her last days in charge of Sonangol,
24:48Isabel de Santos approved millions of dollars of suspicious payments.
24:53The cash all went to a company in Dubai
24:57They'd been hired to restructure Sonangol.
25:00Isabel de Santos has denied being involved with MATA.
25:11But we've discovered it was run by her business manager
25:15and owned by a friend.
25:17And they were sent a lot of cash.
25:21Isabel de Santos was sacked by Sonangol
25:24on 15 November 2017.
25:28We understand that later that day,
25:31MATA sent in more than 50 invoices and she signed them off.
25:37It looks like Isabel de Santos approved these bank transfers
25:41after she was sacked.
25:48The day after she was fired,
25:50Sonangol London's bank account was cleared of cash.
25:54$58 million was sent to the company in Dubai
25:58owned by Isabel de Santos's friend.
26:01MATA says it was hired for its expertise
26:04and the invoiced work was carried out.
26:07Isabel de Santos denies signing off payments after she was sacked.
26:12These payments were paid
26:14and the consultants that received these monies
26:17are very well-known established firms.
26:19These are transparent.
26:21We've received copies of these invoices.
26:25I will not be familiar with the invoices.
26:27Here, for instance, for €472,000.
26:33And there's no explanation for what these expenses are.
26:36I will not be familiar with...
26:38But you signed off on these.
26:40All the services rendered under the contract are known services
26:43and they were delivered and rendered.
26:45And all the invoices are invoices
26:47connected to services rendered.
26:52In this particular transaction in Dubai,
26:55from a company of which she was chair at the time,
26:58looks simply like a massive transfer of money
27:02into a company that is run by a close personal friend
27:06and associate of Isabel de Santos's.
27:11Isabel de Santos's lawyers say
27:14all our allegations are entirely false
27:17and she rejects any allegation of wrongdoing.
27:21They say it's a politically motivated witch-hunt
27:24by the Angolan government.
27:36In Angola, there is a criminal investigation
27:39and her assets have been frozen.
27:42Isabel de Santos is at last having to explain her wealth.
27:49This is a classic example of corruption.
27:52It's a classic example of somebody being able to use
27:55that relationship to benefit themselves.
28:02Now her father has gone, the Angolan people want answers.
28:08The state was at disposal of Isabel de Santos.
28:15And she ruled supreme in grabbing whatever she wanted in this country.
28:25The documents are clear.
28:28Isabel de Santos is the corrupt billionaire.
28:33And Africa's richest woman made her fortune
28:36exploiting her homeland.
28:43The discovery of a woman's body found on the train tracks
28:46and then a big twist, a new silent witness next.
28:50And over on BBC Two now,
28:51two patients trial a groundbreaking cancer treatment.
28:54War in the blood is just starting.