See how Africa's former richest woman went broke....in traces of financial infidelity

It is quite true as an assumption that in the perpetual chase of material and materialistic wealth by humans, men have a kind of upper hand and a great deal of advantage over their female counterparts.

However, some brave, courageous and creative women have successfully managed to challenge the status quo and go ahead to blaze the trail and break grounds in the business, entertainment and creative worlds.

One of such women of high place in the society is isabel do Santos who until last year was africa's owing to her palatial wealth and business concerns which spans across oil and gas, construction fashion and lots more, however this article wouldn't be laying emphasis on her wealth but rather on how this once huge wealth became greatly depleted in a short period of time.

Brief history and biography :

Isabel do Santos is one of the children of Angola's long time supreme leader eduardo do Santos who ruled the country for 38 unbroken years between 1979 and 2017.

She was born in 1973 into this influential family in Angola in eastern Africa.

Wealth and influence

She was a woman who put her father's power and influence to good use, and through it she was able to become africa's richest woman with an estimated net worth of between 3 to 3.5 billion dollars.

The fall

You might have been wondering what could have been the undoing of this great woman, well it all stemmed from the sources of her wealth.

Between 2019 and 2020 shortly after her fathers descent from power, serious investigation by angola's authorities showed that isabel made most of her wealth from unclean sources which were detrimental to the growth of the country, her footprints were found in various deals such as oil a gas scandals, corrupt practices in the award of contracts and a huge volume of money laundering activities.

This revelations led the court to freeze most of her funds and assets in Angola, in Portugal where she also has a lot of properties and businesses the Portuguese authorities followed suit and froze almost all her wealth in the country .

These period was a trying one for her as she also lost her husband to the cold hands of death during the period, a combination of all this led to a serious dip in her wealth and influence.

Although her remaining wealth is still huge enough to last her a lifetime, she is no longer a billionaire according to forbes, her wealth had depleted from more than 2 billion dollars to a few hundred millions, thus making the richest woman in Nigeria Mrs Alakija the richest woman in africa at the moment.

My opinion on this is that wherever we find ourselves we should strive to place premium on our integrity, as posterity sure has a way of dealing with illegalities.

Akinyooyeyusuf