Billionaire Watch
Africa’s richest woman has been dragged to court for corruption
Isabel dos Santos of Angola has finally been dragged to court, charged with money laundering and mismanagement of public assets.
Isabel dos Santos of Angola has finally been dragged to court, charged with money laundering and mismanagement of public assets.
This is a fall from grace for the billionaire daughter of Angola’s former President, Jose Eduardo. She was recently sacked as Chairwoman of Sonangol, the country’s state-owned energy company.
Isabel dos Santos
The BBC reported that dos Santos allegedly worked with four other accomplices to embezzled public funds from Sonangol. The embezzled funds helped her to amass her $2.1 billion fortune. She worked in the oil company for about a year and a half, following a controversial appointment by her father in 2016.
Angola’s Prosecutor General, Helder Pitta Gros, is now fighting to recover the money which has been estimated at $1 billion. He spoke to journalists Wednesday evening and disclosed the allegations against the embattled businesswoman.
“Isabel dos Santos is accused of mismanagement and embezzlement of funds during her tenure at Sonangol and is thus charged in the first instance with the crimes of money laundering, influence peddling, harmful management…forgery of documents, among other economic crimes.”
Earlier in the week, there were media reports about some leaked 700,000 documents detailing how the billionaire amassed her billions through unscrupulous means. A lot of the money she embezzled was transferred abroad.
[READ MORE: Africa’s richest woman almost got fired again)
In the meantime, the billionaire is in hiding. She fled Angola shortly after the investigation, which was initiated by her successor, Carlos Saturnino, led to her indictment. Angola is now seeking an international arrest warrant for her and her accomplices.
Nairametrics reported that the woman had denied all the allegations. Earlier this month, she lamented that her businesses were in trouble following what she described as a politically motivated witch hunt.
Angola’s President Joao Lourenco has been cracking hard on corruption, albeit with a special focus on the family members of his predecessors.
Billionaire Watch
Dangote’s net worth declines by $1.2 billion in February
Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote lost $1.2 billion of his estimated net worth.
Aliko Dangote, the founder of Africa’s most diversified manufacturing conglomerate, Dangote Industries, has seen his net worth decline by a whopping $1.20 billion in the month of February alone.
Africa’s richest man whose wealth peaked at $18.4 billion this year, saw his wealth declined by $1.20 billion, to $16.6 billion from $17.8 billion recorded on the 31st of January 2021, data retrieved from Bloomberg Billionaire Index reveals.
Source: Bloomberg Billionaire Index
The fall in Dangote’s net worth is partly attributable to the decline in the share price of his flagship company, Dangote Cement Plc (DCP), as well as the share price of his integrated sugar business, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc (DSR).
The decline in the share price of these companies which impacted their market capitalization was occasioned by profit-taking activities by investors in February, across the market spectrum.
Facts about Dangote’s networth valuation
The majority of Dangote’s fortune is derived from his 86% stake in the publicly-traded Dangote Cement, as the billionaire holds the shares of the company directly and through his conglomerate, Dangote Industries.
He holds stakes in Nascon Allied Industries and United Bank for Africa, directly and through Dangote Industries, a conglomerate that also owns closely held businesses operating in food manufacturing, fertilizer, oil and other industries.
Dangote’s most valuable closely held asset is his fertilizer plant with a capacity to produce up to 2.8MT of urea annually. The $2.5 billion fertilizer plant owned by Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, is expected to commence operation in the first quarter of 2021.
The billionaire also owns a $12 billion oil refinery which is expected to be completed this year. However, the plant is not included in his net worth valuation, for some reason.
What you should know
- The shares of Dangote Cement at the close trading activities for the month of February declined by 6.78%, extending the YTD loss on the shares of the cement behemoth to over 10%.
- On the flip side, shares of Dangote Sugar Refinery also declined by 15.29% to close the month lower at N18 per share, thus correcting the YTD gains of its shares to 2.27%.
Billionaire Watch
Battle of Titans: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos share world’s richest title
Stiff competition prevails as both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk share the world’s richest title.
The battle for the worlds richest has suddenly become so intense that both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both share the world’s richest man title on the account they both have a net worth of $184 billion.
Bezos, the man behind the world’s most valuable retail company, Amazon, has steadily been seeing his wealth valuation appreciate amid high market volatility currently prevailing at global financial markets.
The 49-year-old self-made billionaire, Elon Musk is sharing, the world’s richest when recent data revealed Tesla recorded impressive gains of about $9.75 at the end of Monday’s trading session.
Investors are currently increasing their buying pressure on Tesla as they weigh reports that the electric vehicle industry is expected to grow into a $5 trillion market over the next decade, thereby giving the world’s most valuable car company room for more upside.
READ: China’s richest man worth $94.1 billion earned a fortune from selling bottled water
It’s important to note that both mega billionaires have in recent times focused their considerable brainpower on space technology as Bezos recently accelerated his space-travel efforts through his firm popularly known as Blue Origin.
Recent reports suggest SpaceX founded by Musk raised another $850 million this month from a group of leading institutional investors led by Sequoia Capital.
Such investment now puts SpaceX’s valuation at $74 billion, a 60% jump from August, and helped boost Musk’s net worth by about $11 billion, according to the index.
Bezos who is now the Chairman of the $1.58 trillion valued company, Amazon has about $9.63 billion cash in the bank.
READ: Apple’s market value cross $ 2 trillion
The online retail giant returns have under his tenure as the chief executive officer of the e-commerce giant actually ranked second among all S&P stocks since the IPO in May 1997.
The 57-year-old billionaire is the founder of Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer company on earth. The American-based company sells books, household goods, and other retail products through its flagship platform.
His company also controls the Whole Foods grocery chain and offers video streaming services and remains the biggest cloud computing provider worldwide.
READ: Billionaires worth over $100 billion made $270 billion in 2020
That being said, both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s wealth valuation would currently buy 107 million troy ounces of gold or 2.91 billion barrels of crude oil.
Olusoji Omole
February 8, 2020 at 4:36 pm
Africa richest woman enmeshed in corruption? Where do we go from here?