7:05 p.m. on Sunday, March 26, 2023
The Mugabes are not alone. In Angola, Kenya and Mozambique, members of onetime ruling dynasties are either in exile, prison or under investigation as new leaders try to claw back billions of dollars that they claim the first families embezzled. Dos Santos was one of the Soviet Union’s closest allies in Africa and in his youth lived in Azerbaijan — then a part of the USSR — where he married a local woman. His daughter Isabel is a dual national of Angola and Russia and in the latter years of her father’s rule took charge of the state-owned oil company,An ailing dos Santos retired in 2017, and his replacement and longtime rival within the MPLA, Joao Lourenco, pledged “to remake Angola.” His first target: the former ruling family.
Before the freeze on her bank accounts, Forbes magazine ranked her “the richest woman in Africa” with a net worth of $2 billion. In Mozambique, Armando Guebuza, who served as president from 2005 to 2015, earned the nickname “Mr. Gu-business” because of claims that any deal could be completed as long as it had the blessing of the president. Among these was a widely questioned $2 billion purchase of naval and fishing boats from a Lebanese firm.