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The Supreme Court of Angola has served Jose Filomeno dos Santos, son of former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and three other defendants, prison sentences over $500 million in graft charges.
Also known as “Zenu,” Jose Filomeno dos Santos was sentenced in regards to the irregular transfer of $500 million alongside former National Bank of Angola (BNA) Governor Valter Filipe, Angolan businessman Jorge Gaudens Sebastiao and former BNA Managing Director Antonio Samalia Bule.
The court noted that the $500 million was transferred from the Angolan Central Bank to the account of a private company headquartered in London to set up a strategic investment fund to finance structural projects in Angola, while Zenu was the head of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund.
Following the supreme court plenary on Fri., Nov. 26, the court confirmed Zenu’s five-year prison sentence. He was found guilty with three others of fraud, embezzlement and influence peddling.
The legal action reconfirms an earlier sentence handed down in August 2020, which served the businessman continuous sentences of four years for fraud and two years for influence peddling.
Zenu was once in charge of the Angolan Sovereign Fund from 2013 to 2018.
He is the younger brother of Isabel dos Santos, the Angolan businessman once considered Africa’s richest woman before her accounts and assets were frozen in Angola.
President Joao Lourenco, who became president in 2017, has waged a war on graft that has seen several associates of Angola’s former president implicated in crimes.
Lourenco fired Zenu as the head of the Strategic Sovereign Fund and sacked his sister from her position as chair of the board of the state-owned oil firm, Sonangol.
Following his exit from the Strategic Sovereign Fund, Zenu was arrested and held at the Sao Paulo Prison in Luanda in September 2018.
