When Angola's largest mobile operator Unitel presented its new faster 4G network in 2014, it was a proud moment for Swedish Ericsson. A company, as the company itself expressed the case. Prior to the launch, the Angolan company had been contacted and the big owner Isabel dos Santos - the daughter of the then President José Eduardo dos Santos - invited Sweden to attend to her.

In an interview with BBC Africa, she describes how Ericsson drove around her in a white van and showcased the technology for watching TV on mobile.

- We got a call from Ericsson where they said that “your network is one of the few networks in the world that we consider to be 4G-ready. Can we test 4G with you? ”, She says.

Voted for "looting"

But while dos Santos planned the 4G launch with Ericsson with one hand, she with the other hand drained the company to hundreds of millions of kronor. That's according to the Portuguese shareholder in Unitel, PTV, who took the charges against dos Santos and the rest of the owners in Unitel to arbitration in Paris.

In addition to PTV and dos Santos, Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol and an exgeneral, also known to dos Santos's father, own a quarter each.

"In addition to striking violations of the shareholder agreements that have harmed PTV, the respondents are also involved in a plan to plunder Unitel's assets and then transfer the profits to other business activities that enrich the defendants, especially in favor of Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola's president" , it says in the application for arbitration.

The list of the various charges also states that "the defendants have plundered Unitel".

PTV water in court. which eventually forced Unitel to pay over SEK 6 billion to the Portuguese company for breach of contract.

Documents provide unique insight

How the arrangement came about is evident in hundreds of thousands of internal documents about Isabel dos Santo's business. Documents that have now been published in the six-year-long review by SVT and some 30 other editors around the world have reviewed together with the journalist network ICIJ.

The documents show how Isabel dos Santos let Unitel lend over SEK 4 billion to Unitel International Holdings (UIH) a company that despite its name is not owned by Unitel but by dos Santos itself. The documents in the leak show that she has written on the loan, both as donor and recipient.

“The transaction between Unitel and Unitel International Holdings has no strategic value or any benefit to Unitel at all. It only serves Isabel dos Santos Interests, ”PTV says in its application.

Exactly what points the court gave PTV right is secret, but dos Santos's lawyers tell ICIJ that the court did not consider the company suffered damage from the controversial loans. dos Santos, for its part, stated that all loans should be repaid, and that the arrangement was commercially correct.

Activist: Ericsson has responsibility

The overall picture of the leak is that dos Santos has shot himself at the fact that her father, President José Eduardo dos Santos, for nearly four decades ruled Angola with a hard hand. In Unitel, it was her father who, through presidential decrees, gave the company the coveted mobile license, the first private in Angola.

Unitel came to be a cash cow - the review of the documents shows that the shareholders received more than SEK 50 billion in dividends between 2006-2015, according to ICIJ's calculation. The company has been called dos Santos private piggy bank.

According to Angolan anti-corruption activist Rafael Marques de Morais, Unitels is her most important company. According to him, Swedish Ericsson and other foreign companies therefore bear a great responsibility for contributing to Angola's corrupt business climate through its business with dos Santos.

- They have had a choice and they have not used their power, their reputation, to demand a clean market, he says.

- They wanted to make money in a very corrupt environment.

Ericsson does not want to comment

The leaked documents that SVT has taken note of also show the extensive business between the two companies, where Ericsson supplied hardware to build Unitel's network. Ericsson itself highlights the collaboration with Unitel as a success with the hashtag #successtories.

Angola is one of the world's most corrupt countries where almost half of the population is estimated to live in poverty. Working as a Swedish company in a country like Angola, where corruption is so widespread, poses a great risk. This is stated by Ulrik Åshuvud, chairman of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International in Sweden.

Not least for a company like Ericsson, which recently had to pay over SEK 10 billion in fines for bribery in several countries. Then companies have to ask if they can operate in the country.

- That is the dilemma: should you leave and not be able to do business in the country? Yes, at least you have to clean them, he says.

- There is no alternative.

SVT has repeatedly sought Ericsson to get answers on how to look at its business with Unitel in Angola, on the relationship with Isabel dos Santos and on the criticism. Ericsson does not want to interview or even comment on them. In an e-mail response, Ericsson only writes that you work carefully against corruption.

Dos Santos: "A witch hunt"

In Angola, after dos Santos's father in 2017 left the presidential post, the new government has sworn to stop corruption and investigators now have Isabel dos Santos in sight. Just before the New Year, two weeks after ICIJ contacted the Angolan authorities with SVT and its other partners as a result of the leaked documents, Angola Isabel dos Santos assets froze. That included her ownership in Unitel. Angolan authorities accuse her of owing over ten billion kronor.

dos Santos denies the crime and dismisses the investigations as a politically motivated "witch hunt". She addresses the information provided in Luanda Leaks in a ten-page long letter from her lawyers.

In a letter to ICIJ, received on January 14, dos Santos responds to the criticism and dismisses all allegations: "As such, absent any particulars of the material on which the ICIJ and its media partners are relying, our client does not consider it appropriate, or constructive, to respond in isolation to the various questions raised by your letter. " Photo: SVT

"There is a concerted attack by the current government that is totally politically motivated," dos Santos told the BBC, one of SVT's partners in the investigation.

- This is political persecution.