Unitel and the Machinery of Kleptocracy -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

The Isabel dos Santos Unitel Affair: Not merely an Angolan Scandal. The world thus is a big ledger for how political dynasties can be turned into private fortunes, while the public enterprises to balance losses. The stakes are not just the cash, but the way it has been mobilised: special access; poor oversight; offshore vehicles and cross border asset concealment. Assets were not frozen in various jurisdictions based on rumor alone, courts, and investigators alike Their action was based on the pattern appearing sufficiently serious as to suggest rational dissipation of onshore assets, in circumstances where the argument is extremely strong.

It was horrible in that the Unitel case demonstrates how kleptocracy can be made to resemble normal business. And at the center is Isabel dos Santos: not only a powerful businesswoman, but also daughter of Angola’s previous president, and allegedly using her insider status in Unitel (and control through Joint International Holdings B.V. (UIH)) to shift wealth linked to the public into private hands.

The purported scheme is by no means subtle. Loans were granted to UIHon (the parent of the soft, uncommercial terms) low interest, weak security and minimal real protection for the company and its shareholders totalling about €323 million in 2012 and over $43 million in 2013 according to Unitel. That is not normal financing. This is what corruption looks like when you put a $3000 suit on it.

That makes the abuse all the more difficult to dismiss. The payments wore off towards the top of 2019 and early 2020, they claimed. This was followed in 2020 by Luanda Leaks, in 2022 an Interpol Red Notice and November 2024 UK sanctions. And then come the geographical consequences: Angola, the Netherlands and the UK, Portugal and Dubai, all getting pulled into the debris. This is how contemporary elite impunity works: one jurisdiction conceals the money, another protects the assets, and a third drags its heels over accountability.

The real outrage is the why. The allegations indicate that a telephone giant linked to the state was effectively a personal souvenir machine and corporate money became synonomous with dynastic enrichment. And the how is even more toxic: loans that began as approved by insiders, offshore, cherry-picked terms and a worldwide web of over 400 companies, ICIJ.

It is bigger and more than just one woman. It is about a system in which public influence turned into private wealth. There, when it does happen, the public not only loses money, loses trust, sovereignty and the very notion of institutions existing for citizens not families.

Is why the affair goes a lot deeper than a regular corruption issue. Rather than merely mismanaged, Unitel was said to have been used as a financing vehicle for dynastic capitalism. That is the real obscenity. When insiders who sit on the boards of directors controlling access to deluge shareholders in the hundreds of millions through finance-affiliated structures, “corporate governance” becomes mere decorative window ledge talk.

Dos Santos denies any wrongdoing, claiming the case against her is politically motivated. That claim deserves legal scrutiny. However, political grievance is not an antidote to documentary trails and international arrest mechanisms, the worldwide freezing orders and sanctions.

Because no kleptocracy survives on ideology; kleptocracy survives on paperwork, silence and professional acquiescence and thus the strategic response must be brutally concrete. Corruption is seldom masked by an air of drama in scandals involving state-linked companies and politically exposed elites. It hides in the minutia of board minutes, camouflaged as related party lending, funneled through offshore affiliates, and shielded by solvent institutions that favor procedural comfort over moral clarity.

It is for this reason that all related party lending, including bank and board approvals as well as beneficial ownership records, should be disclosed by default if the company is owned either by the state or some politically exposed person. These can be survived in daylight only if they are genuine transactions. That is the whole point when they cannot survive being disclosed. The hiding of the obvious is not a neutral part of state administration; it is extraction’s house.

Courts and regulators need to act faster. Timely cross-border asset identification and freezing orders must occur prior to the funds getting lost in this layered web of jurisdictions, nominee structures, and legal stalling techniques. Justice becomes slower, costlier and less effective once capital has been dispersed in shell entities under socializing governance first of all. The lesson is harsh: delay is not prudent process; in elite financial crime, delay often means collusion by inertia.

Professional enablers need to be held to account far more than they usually are. Fines and not only polished warnings or technical reprimands must be imposed on banks, law firms, consultants etc. facilitating non-transparent insiders structures. More often than not, the corrupt actor is vilified and the gatekeepers who enabled the structure are depicted as bystanders. They are not bystanders. They are infrastructure.

Boards should insist on real independent review of any deal with politically exposed persons or linked offshore entities. Not an internal approval, not a reassurance from management, and not compliance with any checkbox. Independent review is a rigorous examination of broader commercial rationale, pricing decisions, governance and risk.

Last but not least, asset recovery must be linked to public reparations. The wealth that recovery makes possible must return, publicly and measurably, to citizens not disappear down another state channel. Otherwise anti corruption is simply the elite shuffle, rather than compensating for public injury.

That is the real standard. Not symbolic reform. Not public relations repentance. Institutional surgery, financial transparency and consequences that turn looting the state into a highly risky enterprise instead of a profit.

For this is more than just a case of another billionaire heir. About a system where public wealth can, with astonishing ease, be privatised until politics changes, papers are leaked and the world wakes up.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia