Rarely has a billionaire fallen so far, so fast. Less
than a year after the Luanda Leaks investigation
revealed how Isabel dos Santos took a cut of her nation’s wealth
through epic-scale insider dealing to become Africa’s wealthiest
woman, her business empire has crumbled.
The global business celebrity is now blocked from accessing hundreds
of millions worth of assets and has been forced to cede control of
multiple companies. She and her associates face investigations,
seizures, and lawsuits around the world.
Reporter Will
Fitzgibbon recaps how it happened and the impact on
Angola’s ongoing anti-corruption movement. He also examines how the
investigation affected the offshore industry, finding that the
Western advisers, financial firms, lawyers, and accountants — who
enabled her rise, profited from corruption, and helped make oil- and
diamond-rich Angola one of the poorest countries on Earth — are back
to work.
“These enablers bear a share of responsibility for the poor living
conditions, even starvation and death, faced by millions of people,”
says Karina Carvalho, the Angolan-born executive director of
Transparency International in Portugal.
ENDING
ANONYMOUS SHELL COMPANIES
The U.S. is poised to adopt rules that would largely end anonymous
shell companies via a must-pass annual defense spending bill — which
President Donald Trump has threatened to veto over provisions
unrelated to financial secrecy. The broad legislation brings
together numerous anti-money laundering reforms that
have been proposed in recent years, and that have referenced a number
of ICIJ investigations.
MAFIA
MONEY LAUNDERING
An Italian investigation details the methods of a businessman
suspected to be the brains behind the business dealings of several
mafia groups. He allegedly
laundered billions by exploiting weaknesses in the global banking
system – shortcomings of which were detailed in the
FinCEN Files. The businessman’s Maltese companies appeared in
Paradise Papers.
RADICAL
LINKS SUSPECTED
A Viennese entrepreneur suspected of being a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood in a recent Austrian probe on terror financing is listed
as the director of offshore companies linked
to a Saudi billionaire in Paradise Papers, ICIJ media
partners profil and Ö1 found
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