[21] Isabel Kukanova dos Santos[22] was born in Baku, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic,[23] the eldest daughter of Angola's longtime President José Eduardo dos Santos (1942–2022) and his first wife, the Russian-born Tatiana Kukanova, whom he met while studying in the then Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

[32][failed verification] In the early 90s, dos Santos started working as a project manager engineer for Urbana 2000, a subsidiary of Jembas Group, that had won a contract to clean and disinfect Luanda.

[34] In 1997, dos Santos entered the international business world, creating companies and holdings in Angola but mostly abroad, making substantial investments in high-profile enterprises, especially in Portugal.

[35][36] As of 2014, holdings of dos Santos included:[37][38] In June 2016, her father appointed her as chair of Sonangol, the Angolan state oil company.

[40] On 30 December 2019, the Luanda Provincial Court ordered the preventive seizure of the personal bank accounts of dos Santos, her husband, Sindika Dokolo, and Mário Filipe Moreira Leite da Silva.

[57] On 27 August 2013, after the green light from the Competition Authority, the merger of the two companies was formalized with the transfer to ZOPT, a special purpose vehicle created to advance the operation, which became the owner of more 50% of the capital of the new group, the shares that dos Santos and Sonaecom hold on Zon and Optimus respectively.

The Angolan businesswoman, on her turn, subscribed exactly the same number of shares of ZOPT, through her holdings Kento and Unitel International, delivering 28.8% of the stake in ZON.

[66] In January 2017 Unitel, led by dos Santos, purchased 2% of Banco Fomento de Angola (BFA) from BPI for 28 million euros and controlled 51.9% of the bank's capital.

[68] In April 2011, dos Santos with 51% control of Condis, signed a joint partnership with the Portuguese Sonae group for the development and operation of a retail trading company in Angola.

[70][71][72] In May 2013, dos Santos announced during a visit to São Tomé and Príncipe that Unitel would invest in education in the country to train engineers, managers and other technicians and also focus on job creation.

[73] By 2015, dos Santos owned a share of satellite-TV operator ZAP, which had in December 2013 acquired the rights to distribute Forbes in a number of Portuguese-speaking countries, namely Portugal, Angola, and Mozambique.

[78] In January 2024 she was accused by the Angolan high court to have used "offshore companies, fraudulent invoices, forged documents and “exorbitant” salary raises to illegally pocket millions".

[79][80] On 19 January 2020 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a detailed report on how dos Santos amassed her wealth over the years.

The report, based on information provided by corruption watchdog The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa – which it called Luanda Leaks – said she "made a fortune at the expense of the Angolan people".

[81] The night of 22 January, three days after the leaks, her personal wealth manager and private banking director Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha was found dead in the garage of his house.