Africa death: Isabel dos Santos’ husband dies in a diving accident...

The husband of the richest woman in Africa died in a diving accident off the coast of Dubai after getting into trouble.

Sindika Dokolo, 48, married Isabel dos Santos in 2002 after they met while studying at King’s College, London. Her wedding in Angola – where 70 percent of the population lives below the border – cost £ 2.5 million.

The Congolese businessman and art collector was a skilled driver but was unable to be resuscitated after getting into trouble Thursday, The Times reported.

Cedric Mala, a friend, told the newspaper, “Unfortunately the last outing was fatal. The doctors tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him. ‚

Mrs dos Santos posted a photo with her husband and one of their three children on the day of his death. It was labeled: “My love …”

According to his family, art was Mr. Dokolo’s passion. He was the son of the founder of the Bank of Kinshasa of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr. Dokolo collected more than 5,000 works by contemporary African artists and wanted to help restore African art and artifacts in museums across the continent.

Earlier this year, Ms. dos Santos was charged with withdrawing millions of dollars in public money from diamond, oil and telecommunications deals during her father Jose’s 38-year tenure as President of Angola.

Dos Santos, who has 223,000 Instagram followers and hooks up with celebrities such as Rita Ora and Nicole Scherzinger, alleged prosecutors used shady emails and a fake passport from an internet scammer to prove their wrongdoing.

Not only did the passport have the signature of the late 1970s martial arts star, it also had two different serial numbers, the wrong date of birth and information in English if Angolan documents are in Portuguese, she said.

Ms. dos Santos insisted she was innocent and claimed that her fortune was “built on my character, intelligence, education, ability to work and perseverance”.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, English-speaking Ms. dos Santos, the owner of a £ 13 million home in Kensington, west London, said the Angolan and Portuguese courts relied on “fabricated evidence” to find her guilty.

“It appears that a well-orchestrated government campaign has been waged against me,” she told MailOnline. “It is ridiculous that Portugal, a senior EU country, is seizing assets based on the Angolan state relying on a passport that a child can view as a forgery.

‘Evidence was fabricated on the back of bogus emails and the signature of a beloved but long-dead movie star. That is not right and my property should be released urgently. ‚

Last year, Angolan courts accused Ms. dos Santos, who was tutored at Cobham Hall girls’ boarding school in Kent and King’s College London, of a long list of crimes, including embezzlement and money laundering, allegedly committed during her tenure at the helm of oil giant Sonangol.

She and her husband were accused of controlling payments of more than $ 1 billion (£ 800,000) from public corporations to companies in which they were involved before moving them out of the country.

Their accounts were frozen in Angola in December. Portuguese prosecutors followed suit in February after being charged with corruption while at Sonangol.

Evidence included emails in which Ms. dos Santos apparently contacted Japanese companies and offered to invest € 1 billion to extract misappropriated funds from Angola. Her passport was apparently scanned to prove it was real.

But the emails were simply sent by a seedy Middle Eastern scammer who forged passports to defraud the Japanese – and the court took the documents at face value, she said.

Alvaro Joao, spokesman for Angola’s public prosecutor’s office, dismissed the allegations as a “comedy”. He said, “The passport is not a sufficient document for a judge to … order (a suspension of) banking.”

An international arrest warrant for Ms dos Santos could be issued if she does not cooperate with the investigation, added the prosecutor, pointing out that the Portuguese court did not rely on the documents in question.

The colorful celebrity has built a huge business empire over the past two decades, which has involved several Angolan and Portuguese companies. She spoke of her hopes to become president in 2022.

Ms. dos Santos left Angola in 2017 when her father resigned and spent her time between London and Dubai, although her current whereabouts are a closely guarded secret.

Angola has vast mineral and oil reserves, but its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a ruling elite. In the general population, life expectancy is among the lowest in the world and child mortality is among the highest.

A consortium of investigative journalists accused the former first daughter of plundering state coffers during the nearly four decades of her father’s reign after analyzing hundreds of thousands of leaked documents.

The leaked documents appeared to reveal how she secured access to lucrative diamond, telecommunications, oil, and land deals and closed seedy deals that enabled her and her husband to acquire valuable state assets.