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The UK has imposed sanctions on three people including Africa’s former richest woman as the Labour government steps up efforts to clamp down on those who enable money laundering through Britain’s financial system.
The measures hit Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former president, and Dmytro Firtash, an exiled Ukrainian oligarch who is accused of embezzling money from the country’s gas supplies, as well as Aivars Lembergs, one of Latvia’s richest men who was jailed last year for bribery by a court in Riga.
Foreign secretary David Lammy said the sanctions “mark the first step in delivering [an] ambition” to take on “kleptocrats and the dirty money that empowers them”. He added: “The tide is turning. The golden age of money laundering is over.”
The designations were made under a UK regulation aimed at combating global corruption, passed in 2021, which allows sanctions to be levied on people involved directly or indirectly in bribery or the misappropriation of property. It has now been used against 50 individuals.
The Foreign Office said Thursday’s sanctions mark “a step change in how this government is using its sanctions powers to make the UK a more hostile environment for corrupt actors to operate in” by also targeting enablers helping to move wealth into UK assets.
The UK sanctions on Firtash will be a boost to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, which has been investigating the former partner of Russia’s Gazprom in Ukraine for alleged graft in gas distribution.
Firtash has been in exile from Ukraine for a decade in Austria, where he is also battling against US extradition in a separate corruption case.
The Foreign Office said he “has hidden tens of millions of pounds of ill-gotten gains in the UK property market alone”, including the site of the former Brompton Road tube station, which has been held by his wife, who is also sanctioned.
Lammy, who represents Tottenham, said: “As a London MP, this is personal to me. For too long, previous governments have turned a blind eye to the flows of illicit funds through our capital city. London homes are not the Bitcoins of kleptocrats.”
Dos Santos, who once claimed to be Africa’s first woman billionaire, “systematically abused her positions at state-run companies” to loot Angola’s resources during her father’s 38-year rule, the UK said as it imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on her.
She rose to chair Angola’s state oil company under her father’s rule after amassing business interests across the economy. Her downfall began soon after a new president came to power in 2017, and since 2020 she has faced lawsuits or criminal investigations in multiple countries.
Dos Santos has already been losing a battle in English courts to overturn an order to freeze her assets worldwide in a dispute with Unitel, Angola’s biggest telecoms group, which she founded in 1998. Her 25 per cent stake in the company was seized by the Angolan state and Unitel has accused her of looting the group with loans.
Firtash and dos Santos did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lembergs could not be reached for comment. All have previously denied any wrongdoing.