Bank BIC Cabo Verde (BIC-CV, majority-owned by Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, made a profit of €6 million in 2019, an increase of 14.8% over the previous year it announced on Monday.
In the bank’s 2019 report and accounts, to which Lusa had access today, it is stated that BIC-CV’s profit, with a net profit for the year of €6.02 million (€5.24 million 2018), “increased essentially” due to “results in financial operations and the investment fund units in the portfolio”.
The board of directors proposed the to retain all earnings, without distributing any dividends, a practice adopted by all seven Cape Verdean banks operating with resident clients, as a preventive measure against the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
BIC-CV is one of four banks operating in Cabo Verde with restricted authorisation, only for non-resident clients and therefore considered ‘offshore’, a regime that, by virtue of the legal amendment approved by the Cape Verdean parliament ends at the end of this year.
In 2018, the bank owned by Isabel dos Santos in Cape Verde had only 12 employees, a number that fell to 11 last year, in addition to two directors at the general assembly table, five members of the board of directors (led by Luso-Angolan Fernando Teles), three on the executive board, and three permanent members of the supervisory board.
The Bank of Cape Verde (BCV) announced in January of this year that it will draw “the appropriate consequences” from the inspection of the BIC-CV bank, after information conveyed as part of the investigation by the International Investigative Journalism Consortium (ICIJ), a process known as ‘Luanda Leaks’, which indicates that that bank was allegedly used by Dos Santos in contracts of dubious provenance.
In the 2019 report and accounts, as “relevant facts that occurred after the end of the year,” the institution recalls that on January 19, 2020 “an investigation carried out by an international consortium of journalists into the business of Isabel dos Santos, a shareholder of BIC-CV bank, was made public.
According to information from BCV, Isabel dos Santos holds, indirectly, through Santoro Financial Holdings, SGPS, SA and Finisantoro Holding Limited, 42.5% of the share capital of BICbo Ca Verde, although “not performing any function in the governing bodies of the institution.
The International Investigative Journalism Consortium (ICIJ) revealed in January more than 715,000 files, under the name of ‘Luanda Leaks’, which detail financial schemes of Isabel dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, which allowed the withdrawal of money from the Angolan public treasury, using tax havens.
Isabel dos Santos said she was a victim of an orchestrated political attack to neutralise her and argued that the allegations made against her are “completely unfounded,” promising to “fight in international courts” to “restore the truth.
