The husband of Africa’s richest woman has 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 as students at King’s College in London. Their wedding in Angola – where 70 per cent of residents live below the breadline – cost £2.5 million.
The Congolese businessman and art collector was an experienced diver but could not be revived after getting into trouble on Thursday, The Times reported.
Cedric Mala, a friend, told the newspaper: ‘Unfortunately the last outing was fatal. The doctors tried to resuscitate him without success.’
Mrs dos Santos posted a photograph with her husband and one of their three children on the day of his death. It was captioned: ‘My love…’
Art was Mr Dokolo’s passion, according to his family. He was the son of the founder of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Bank of Kinshasa.
Mr Dokolo collected more than 5,000 works from contemporary African artists and wanted to help restore African art and artefacts back to museums on the continent.
Earlier this year Mrs dos Santos was accused of siphoning off millions of dollars of public money from deals involving diamonds, oil and telecoms during her father Jose’s 38-year rule as president of Angola.
Mrs dos Santos, who has 223,000 Instagram followers and socialises with celebrities like Rita Ora and Nicole Scherzinger, claimed that prosecutors used dodgy emails and a bogus passport made by an internet scammer to prove her wrongdoing.
In addition to having the signature of the late Seventies martial arts star rather than hers, the passport showed two different serial numbers, the wrong date of birth and information in English when Angolan documents are in Portuguese, she said.
Insisting she is innocent, Mrs dos Santos claimed her fortune was ‘built on my character, my intelligence, education, capacity for work, perseverance’.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, English-educated Mrs dos Santos, owner of a £13million home in Kensington, West London, said the Angolan and Portuguese courts had relied on ‘fabricated evidence’ to pin blame on her.
In other news – Shocking video of a dead man still breathing inside coffin one year after his burial – Watch
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The community people in Umuoji, Amucha, Imo state, Nigeria, were left in deep shock when the corpse of a dead man was exhumed and they discovered he was still “breathing” and his body was yet to decay. Learn more
Source: dailymail
