Businesswoman Isabel dos Santos and former Vice President of Angola Manuel Vicente own luxury real estate in London.

Isabel dos Santos owns property worth more than 20 million euros in London, and former Vice President of Angola Manuel Vicente owns two luxury apartments next to Harrods, also in the British capital, both through offshore companies.

Names that have so far been hidden thanks to the anonymity afforded by tax havens have been revealed thanks to new transparency rules introduced by the United Kingdom to determine who owns property in the country.

Isabel dos Santos, a businesswoman accused of embezzling public funds and facing an international arrest warrant, has two homes in London, according to Companies House.

The houses in a private condominium in the prestigious Kensington area are controlled by Wilkson Properties Limited, based on the Isle of Man, of which Isabel José dos Santos is the sole beneficiary.

One, a flat, was bought in 2006 for £875,000, while the other, a house, was sold a year later for £8.65 million, according to the Land Registry.

According to The Move Market website, taking into account the prices of neighboring properties and the evolution of the market, the combined value of the two properties is currently £18 million, which is around €20.5 million.

Isabel dos Santos is the subject of an international arrest warrant at the request of the Attorney General of the Republic of Angola on suspicion of “crimes of embezzlement, qualified fraud, unlawful participation in business, criminal conspiracy and trading in influence, money laundering.” with a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison.

In December, the Supreme Court of Angola ordered a preventive seizure of the assets of businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, estimated at one billion dollars (941 million euros), including bank accounts and shareholdings in the name of a businesswoman, which was even considered by Forbes magazine. “The richest woman in Africa.”

According to the Observer, in addition to criminal and civil cases in Angola, Isabel dos Santos has frozen assets and accounts in Portugal, where 17 cases are pending.

The UK Business Register has also recently been updated to list Manuel Vicente, former chairman of Sonangol and former number two President of Angola José Eduardo dos Santos, father of Isabel dos Santos, as the owner of two apartments worth several million euros.

Riser Limited from the British Virgin Islands purchased the two apartments for £940,000 and £475,000 in 2005 and 2010 respectively.

But website The Move Market estimates they could cost around £6.6m (€7.5m) today due to their privileged location in Knightsbridge, both meters from luxury goods store Harrods.

The name of former leader José Eduardo dos Santos has featured in several corruption scandals but has escaped criminal investigations thanks to the immunity granted by the Angolan Constitution to the former holders of this position.

In Portugal, Vicente was investigated for alleged payments to public prosecutor Orlando Figueira, who was suspended from the profession and sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for corruption and other crimes.

The case sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries in 2018, which was resolved after he was separated from charges of Operation Fizz and transferred to Angola, where he awaits developments.

The former president of the state oil company Sonangol is also named in the indictment of the Angolan prosecutor’s office against Generals Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias and Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento.

The document states that Angola sold Sonangol International Holding Limited, a company 70% Chinese owned and 30% Sonangol EP, between December 5, 2004 and November 6, 2007, of crude oil for a total of $1.598 billion (1 .51 billion euros). without any clear benefit to the Angolan state or Sonangol EP itself.”

The former vice president of Angola is also linked to CIF, a Chinese company whose assets in Angola have been taken over by the state, and several businesses that have caused millions of dollars in damage to the country.

Manuel Vicente has been the subject of a property investigation by the Angolan authorities to recover the assets, but the amounts returned are unknown.

Another well-known Angolan public figure who owns valuable real estate in London is Silvio Franco Buriti, former chairman of the board of directors of the General Revenue Office and former national director of Alfandegas de Angola.

Berity is the beneficial owner of two companies located in the British Virgin Islands: Wyndham Mews Limited and Rolling Heights Limited.

The companies own a house in Stratford-upon-Avon, a village northwest of London famous for being the birthplace of writer William Shakespeare in 1564, and a six-bedroom villa in the British capital worth nearly £3.5 million. million pounds sterling). 4 million euros).

The revelations are the result of an analysis by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Transparency International, which condemned the lack of transparency in which offshore companies based in tax havens own property in the United Kingdom seven years ago, raising suspicions of cash. money laundering through the British real estate market.

Since then, he has been lobbying the British government to have the real people behind these foreign “front companies” identified in British records.

According to NGOs, companies headquartered in “opaque financial centers” such as the British Virgin Islands are frequently involved in corruption and money laundering cases.

The Foreign Entity Registry was created under the Economic Crimes Act passed last year, accelerated by the war in Ukraine, “to root out corrupt oligarchs and elites who are trying to hide money misappropriated through British real estate.”

The deadline for determining and registering the true beneficiaries of British property is January 31, but thousands of businesses have yet to do so.

The new land registry has already helped identify assets owned by politically exposed persons (PEPs) that Transparency International says should be the subject of closer scrutiny.

The next step, according to Ben Cowdock, who is in charge of investigations at Transparency International, should be an investigation by the British authorities of some of these people.

“We would like the police to launch an investigation against anyone accused of corruption. [no estrangeiro] and transferring large sums of money to the real estate market [britânico]”, he told Lusa.

Kaudok suggests that authorities contact authorities in advance in jurisdictions among those people who are being investigated.

“British police should start contacting foreign law enforcement and start working with them to try to find out if these assets can be recovered and the funds returned to where they came from,” he stressed.